IC-NRLF 


00 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


GIFT    OF 


U-JL JL*JM f] !  %  1  4-. 


ERRATUM. 

Page  69.  For  "  Rector  Williams,  etc.,"  read  "  President  Clap  in  his 
history  of  Yale  College  expresses  the  opinion  that  'this  College 
will  always  retain  a  most  grateful  sense  of  his  generosity  and 
merits  ;  and  probably  a  favorable  opinion  of  his  idea  of  material 
substance  as  not  consisting  in  an  unknown  and  inconceivable  sub- 
stratum but  in  a  stated  union  and  combination  of  sensible  ideas 
excited  from  without  by  some  intelligent  Being.' " 


OF  THE 
UNIVERSITY 

OF 


THE    TWO-HUNDREDTH 
BIRTHDAY  OF 


BISHOP  GEORGE  BERKELEY 


A   DISCOURSE   GIVEN 
AT   YALE   COLLEGE    ON   THE 
J2TH  OF  MARCH,  1885 


BY 


NOAH  PORTER 


NEW-YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1885 


0/34-* 


Copyright,  1885,  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 


THIS    VOLUME    IS    INSCRIBED 
TO 

THOMAS   MARCH   CLARK,   D.  D.,  D.  C.  L. 

AND 

WILLIAM   INGRAHAM   KIP,   D.  D.,  LL.  D. 

CLASSMATES    OF   THE    WRITER    AT    YALE, 

WHO,    AS    BISHOPS    OF 

RHODE    ISLAND    AND    CALIFORNIA, 

ARE     ONE     WITH     HIM     IN     HONORING 

THE    MEMORY    OF 

BERKELEY. 


PREFACE. 

( 

The  substance  of  the  following  discourse  was 
given  at  Yale  College  on  the  1 2th  of  March,  1885, 
in  commemoration  of  the  2Ooth  birthday  of  the 
distinguished  and  excellent  Berkeley.  {Most  of 
the  materials  were  taken  from  the  elaborate  (( Life 
and  Letters"  by  Professor  Alexander  Campbell 
Fraser,  M.  A.,  Oxford,  1871 ;  and  the  more  brief 
but  excellent  sketch  by  the  same  author  in  Knight's 
(< Philosophical  Classics,"  Edinburgh,  1881 .  The 
design  of  the  writer  was  to  present  in  a  compact 
and  somewhat  popular  form  the  most  important 
facts  in  Berkeley's  history,  that  he  might  do  some- 
thing to  keep  his  memory  fresh  and  fragrant  in 
the  minds  of  studious  and  thoughtful  men  and 
women  of  the  present  generation .  With  the  same 
desire  he  gives  this  discourse  to  the  public,  with  the 
added  wish  that  what  be  has  written  may  also 


vi  Preface. 

incite  some  of  bis  readers  to  a  thorough  study  of 
^Berkeley's  Tbilosophy.  No  better  discipline  to 
clear  and  sharp  thinking,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
noble  aims  and  aspirations,  can  be  furnished  than 
can  be  gained  by  a  study  of  Berkeley's  life  and 
opinions.  The  exhaustive  biographies  by  Pro- 
fessor Fraser,  already  named,  are  all  that  are 
needed  for  the  study  of  his  life.  The  ''Selections 
from  Berkeley,  with  an  introduction  and  notes 
for  the  use  of  Students  in  the  Universities,"  Ox- 
ford, 1874,  by  the  same  writer,  and  the  admi- 
rably annotated  edition  of  the  "  Treatise  con- 
cerning the  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,"  by 
the  late  Professor  and  Vice- Provost  Charles  P. 
Krautb,  D.  D.,  Philadelphia,  1874,  are  all  that 
are  required  for  the  intelligent  study  of  Berkeley's 
writings. 

It  is  always  refreshing,  and  sometimes  instruc- 
tive, to  turn  from  Kant  or  Hegel,  and  even 
from  Lotqe  and  Wundt,  to  the  sharp  and  spark- 
ling, if  be  is  now  and  then  the  paradoxical  and 
pertinacious  Berkeley. 

The  memory  of  Berkeley  will  always  be  fresh 


Preface.  vii 

and  fragrant  with  all  generous  and  thoughtful 
souls.  The  facts  are  not  without  interest,  that 
Berkeley's  name  is  connected  with  one  of  the  most 
interesting  and  delightful  points  of  land  that  looks 
out  upon  the  stormy  Atlantic  towards  the  "still- 
vexed  Bermoothes,"  where  he  hoped  to  locate 
his  college,  and  has  also  been  attached  to  the 
beautiful  site  of  the  University  of  California, 
which  commands  the  golden  gate  that  opens 
into  the  great  Pacific. 

Not  only  has  his  own  prophecy  been  fulfilled — 
"  Westward  the  course  of  Empire  takes  its 
way,"  but  bis  name  has  also  gone  westward  to 
hallow  and  inspire  all  those  enterprises  of  edu- 
cation and  religion  such  as  be  desired  to  initiate, 
which  distinguish  and  glorify  'that  greater  kingdom 
of  God,  which  sooner  or  later  shall  encircle  "  the 
round  world,"  and  bless  all  those  who  dwell 
therein. 

Yale  College,  April,  1885. 


BISHOP  GEORGE  BERKELEY. 


GEORGE  BERKELEY,  dean  and  bishop, 
was  born  two  hundred  years  ago  this  very 
day.  His  character  was  unique  for  unselfish 
enthusiasm  in  a  corrupt  and  selfish  time ;  his 
contributions  to  the  literature  and  philosophy 
of  his  generation  were  timely  and  effective ; 
his  influence  upon  the  speculation  and  culture 
of  the  world  continues  to  be  felt  and  ac- 
knowledged; his  interest  in  Ireland  and  America 
is  still  remembered  with  grateful  regard.  For 
all  these  reasons  his  two-hundredth  birthday 
deserves  to  be  noticed  with  a  grateful  benedic- 
tion by  any  one  who  happens  to  be  reminded 
of  it.  There  is  no  place,  however,  where  this 
day  so  richly  deserves  to  be  honored  by  a  formal 


•     * 


2  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

recognition  as  at  Yale  College,  for  his  generous 
sympathy  in  the  days  of  its  poverty  and  weak- 
ness, and  for  a  benefaction  which  was  as  unique 
for  its  noble  disinterestedness  as  it  has  been 
valuable  for  its  permanent  usefulness. 

These  are  the  reasons  which  have  induced  me 
to  undertake  the  task  of  sketching  the  personal 
history  of  his  romantic  life,  and  of  estimating 
the  import  and  value  of  his  services  to  philosophy 
and  the  Christian  faith ;  remembering  that  to 
us  he  was  a  generous  benefactor,  who  is  none 
the  less  deserving  of  our  affectionate  honor, 
because  of  his  goodness  as  a  man,  his  genius  as 
a  philosopher,  and  his  devotion  as  a  Christian 
missionary. 

Berkeley  was  born  in  Ireland  near  Thomas- 
town,  in  the  county  of  Kilkenny,  of  parents  of 
English  descent,  and  of  respectable  position  and 
estate.  He  received  his  early  classical  educa- 
tion from  the  age  of  eleven  to  fifteen  at  the 
Duke  of  Ormond's  school  in  Kilkenny,  then 
called  the  Eton  of  Ireland.  At  fifteen  he  was 
matriculated  at  Trinity  College  in  Dublin,  the 
year  before  that  in  which  Yale  College  was 


Bishop  George  Berkeley.  3 

founded.  Here  he  resided  as  student  and  fellow 
for  thirteen  years.  Trinity  College  *had  from 
its  reopening  in  1592  been  the  one  Protestant 
university  of  Ireland  ;  sharing  with  the  Protestant 
Establishment  the  weakness  and  limitations  of 
its  isolation,  but  now  and  then  showing  an  en- 
thusiasm and  independence  of  its  own  such  as 
was  natural  to  its  very  position  and  the  race 
which  it  educated.  It  has  been  called,  with  a 
slight  suggestion  of  reproach,  the  Silent  Sister, 
and  yet  it  has  now  and  then  made  its  voice 
heard  in  a  manner  not  altogether  agreeable  to 
its  more  decorous  elders  on  the  other  side  of 
the  channel.  At  the  time  when  Berkeley  was 
a  resident  it  was  controlled  by  men  of  distin- 
guished ability  and  marked  independence.  Its 
Provost  for  nearly  all  this  time  was  the  cele- 
brated Peter  Browne,  afterwards  Bishop  of 
Cork,  the  author  of  two  works,  much  talked  of 
in  their  day;  viz.,  "The  Procedure,  Extent, 
and  Limits  of  the  Human  Understanding,"  1 728, 
and  "Divine  Analogy,"  1733.  William  King 
became  Archbishop  of  Dublin  in  1 703,  and  was 
author  of  the  work  on  "The  Origin  of  Evil," 


4  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

which  was  sharply  criticized  by  Leibnitz  and 
Bayle ;  and  of  some  other  notable  theological 
treatises.  Both  these  writers  were  foremost  in 
the  controversies  of  their  own  times.  Their  rep- 
utation has  been  recently  revived  by  Whately,* 
Hamilton,  Mansel,*  and  Herbert  Spencer,  all 
leaders  in  the  modern  speculations  concerning 
agnosticism.  Even  the  physics  and  metaphysics 
of  Descartes  were  still  under  discussion.  The 
new  physics  of  Newton  and  the  founders  of  the 
Royal  Society  were  fighting  their  way  into 
acceptance  at  Oxford.  The  new  metaphysics  of 
John  Locke  had  recently  begun  to  attract  atten- 
tion, his  great  work  having  been  published  only 
ten  years  when  Berkeley  began  his  studies  at 
Dublin.  Indeed,  his  college  life  was  altogether 
a  fermenting  period  for  thought  and  action.  To 

*  "  Of  the  Right  Method  of  Interpreting  Scripture  in 
what  relates  to  the  Nature  of  the  Deity  and  his  Dealings 
with  Mankind,"  illustrated  in  a  Discourse  on  Predestination, 
by  Dr.  King,  late  Lord  Archbishop  of  Dublin,  preached  at 
Christ  Church,  Dublin,  before  the  House  of  Lords;  with 
notes  by  the  Rev.  Richard  Whately,  M.  A.,  Fellow  of  Oriel 
College,  Oxford.  Oxford,  1821.  Also,  "  The  Limits  of  Re- 
ligious Thought  Examined,"  by  Henry  Longueville  Mansel. 
London,  1858.  Boston  (reprinted),  1859. 


Bishop  George  Berkeley.  5 

hold  a  principle  in  philosophy,  or  politics,  or 
religion  was  a  serious  business,  when  two 
or  three  claimants  for  the  crown  of  England 
were  ready  to  convulse  the  country  with  civil 
war.  Ireland  was  still  restless  and  unsubdued, 
having  recently  experienced  a  bloody  rising  and 
a  bloody  defeat.  The  sphere  of  speculation  and 
of  faith  was  beginning  to  be  stirred  in  England 
and  on  the  continent,  by  that  materialistic  and 
anti- Christian  movement,  which  continued  with 
occasional  reactions  till  the  bloody  horrors  of 
the  French  Revolution.  It  was  altogether  an 
exciting  and  uncertain  period,  especially  for  an 
ardent  Irish  youth  at  a  Protestant  University 
in  Dublin,  standing  over  against  the  Dublin 
Castle. 

To  all  these  exciting  agencies  Berkeley  re- 
sponded with  the  enthusiasm  and  energy  of 
an  ardent  and  self-relying  spirit.  "  Ordinary 
people  did  not  understand  him  and  laughed  at 
him.  Soon  after  his  entrance  he  began  to  attract 
attention  as  either  the  greatest  genius  or  the 
greatest  dunce  in  college."  "  He  prosecuted 
his  studies  with  simplicity  and  enthusiasm." 


6  Bisbop  George  Berkeley. 

Early  in  1 705,  when  he  was  twenty  years  old, 
he  formed  a  society  with  a  few  friends  to  pro- 
mote and  criticize  the  new  philosophy  of  Boyle, 
Newton,  and  Locke.  A  well-filled  and  motley 
commonplace  book  still  survives,  abounding  in 
every  variety  of  suggestions  in  regard  to  the 
opinions  which  were  discussed  by  his  associ- 
ates and  himself,  which  indicates  extraordinary 
breadth  of  inquiry  and  maturity  of  thought  for  a 
young  man  of  from  twenty  to  twenty-five  years. 
We  find  in  one  place  the  recognition  of  a  special 
call  to  himself  of  duty  and  of  God  to  indepen- 
dent and  bold  speculation,  and  the  expression  of 
a  sturdy  resolve  to  be  true  to  all  his  convictions. 
In  other  places,  in  brief  jottings,  we  find  many 
of  the  seeds  of  thought  which  took  form  and  life 
in  his  subsequent  treatises.  His  abundant  ref- 
erences to  all  the  recent  writers  in  philosophy, 
mathematics,  and  physics  show  that  he  was 
fully  abreast  with  his  time. 

In  1709,  when  he  was  twenty-four  years  old, 
he  published  his  "  Essay  on  a  New  Theory  of 
Vision,"  which  made  an  epoch  in  the  analysis 
of  the  sense  perceptions,  and  would  of  itself  have 


Bishop  George  Berkeley.  7 

made  him  immortal.  It  passed  to  a  second 
edition  in  a  year,  and  for  clearness  of  style  and 
skill  of  presentation,  and  above  all  for  its  sugges- 
tions of  profound  philosophical  truth,  is  as  well 
worth  reading  now  as  when  it  was  first  written. 
Not  that  many  of  the  facts  and  phenomena  were 
not  already  familiar,  nor  that  their  importance 
had  not  been  recognized.  Men  had  always 
known  that  one  of  the  senses  could,  to  some 
extent,  be  used  for  another ;  that  they  could  and 
did  judge  of  distance,  and  size,  and  motion  by 
the  pictures  which  the  light  paints  on  the  eye  ; 
but  they  had  never  analyzed  so  skilfully,  nor 
generalized  so  broadly,  nor  reasoned  so  con- 
vincingly as  when  Berkeley  taught  them  that 
every  act  of  vision  is  an  act  of  judgment  or 
interpretation,  involving  a  rational  process,  more 
rapid  indeed  than  what  men  call  thinking,  but 
an  act  of  thought  none  the  less. 

The  success  of  this  essay  was  not  owing  to 
the  facts  which  were  first  brought  to  light,  for 
many  of  these  had  been  known  before,  nor 
to  the  generalization  which  was  derived  from 
them  that  acts  of  vision  are  acts  of  interpreta- 


8  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

tion,  so  that  we  see  with  the  mind  as  truly  as 
with  the  eyes,  but  to  the  clearness  and  felicity 
with  which  these  facts  are  stated,  and  the 
convincing  energy  with  which  the  several  con- 
clusions leap  forth  from  the  facts,  all  of  which 
indicate  philosophic  genius.  Berkeley  did  not 
write  this  essay  simply  as  an  analysis  of  sense 
perception.  He  had  a  higher  aim  than  this. 
He  would  explode  the  received  ideas  of  matter 
and  force,  and  thus  compel  his  readers  by  the 
analysis  of  the  processes  of  vision  to  see  and 
recognize  the  presence  and  agency  of  the 
living  and  the  ever-present  God.  That  this 
was  his  aim  is  evident  from  the  outlines  of  an 
argument  to  this  effect  which  we  find  in  his 
commonplace  book.  This  argument  was  re- 
sumed and  partially  completed  in  a  treatise, 
published  in  1710,  when  he  was  twenty-five 
years  old,  and  entitled  "  A  Treatise  on  the 
Principles  of  Human  Knowledge."  This  was 
followed  in  1713  by  ''Dialogues  between  Hylas 
and  Philonous,"  in  which  the  argument  is  car- 
ried to  its  conclusion.  These  three  treatises 
set  in  motion  a  train  of  speculation  which  has 


Ttisbop  George  Berkeley.  9 

never  ceased  to  move  till  the  present  hour, 
the  course  of  which  can  be  traced  through  the 
skeptical  and  one-sided  philosophies  of  Eng- 
land, Scotland,  and  France,  and  the  idealistic 
and  imaginative  systems  of  Germany. 

The  doctrines  of  these  three  treatises  of 
Berkeley's  struck  the  world  at  first  simply  as 
paradoxes.  But  the  sense  of  strangeness 
aroused  and  compelled  sober  inquiry.  In- 
quiry not  infrequently  settled  into  conviction 
that  God  is  nearer  to  man  than  man  had  sup- 
posed, even  in  the  ordinary  processes  which  seem 
to  shut  him  out  of  sight.  These  give  a  deeper 
and  truer  meaning  to  the  words,  "  who  coverest 
thyself  with  light  as  with  a  garment,"  inasmuch 
as  the  analysis  of  vision  reveals  the  truth  that 
man,  in  interpreting  the  indications  of  color  and 
outline,  is  compelled  to  assume  the  presence  and 
agency  of  the  Supreme  Reason.*  Berkeley's 
argument  was,  briefly,  thus  :  The  direct  object 
of  the  mind's  knowledge  by  any  single  act  of 
sense  can  only  be  an  affection  of  the  mind, 
whether  this  object  be  a  sight,  a  touch,  or  a  sound. 

*  See  Note  A. 
3 


io  Ttishop  George  Berkeley. 

The  product  of  two  such  acts  conjoined  can  only 
be  two  of  these  together.  Five  can  only  give 
five  conjoined — these  five  and  nothing  more. 
It  follows  that  what  we  call  matter  or  material 
objects  are  combinations  or  aggregates  of  sights 
and  touches  and  smells,  as  perceived  by,  and, 
therefore,  as  affections  of  the  mind.  They  are 
to  us  just  what  they  are  perceived  to  be,  and 
they  are  perceived  to  be  what  they  are  felt  to  be 
— this,  and  nothing  more.  The  material  world 
in  which  each  man  lives,  and  which  seems  to  him 
so  solid  and  so  real,  is  only  his  own  world  of 
possible  and  actual  sensations.  If  he  is  blind,  his 
world  is  a  world  of  touches,  smells,  sounds,  and 
tastes.  If  he  is  color-blind,  two  or  three  dingy 
colors  constitute  his  visible  universe.  What  we 
call  the  material  world  is  what  the  senses  give  us, 
one  by  one,  and  all  as  their  sum.  When  the  swan 
floats  gracefully  on  the  surface  of  the  mirroring 
lake,  the  perfectly  reflected  image  that  seems  its 
other  self  is  just  as  truly  a  visible  reality  as  the 
floating  figure  which  we  can  also  touch  and 
handle.  The  gorgeous  rainbow,  such  as  we  some- 
times see  in  the  Adirondacks,  that  from  the  deep 


"Bishop  George  "Berkeley.  n 

valley  spans  the  mountain  from  three  to  five 
thousand  feet  upwards,  is  as  truly  real  while  it 
continues  as  are  the  everlasting  hills  on  which  are 
imprinted  its  fiery  bars.  The  being  of  the  sense 
world  is  its  being  perceived.  Esse  est  percipi. 
There  is  no  sense  reality  except  what  is  thus  ex- 
perienced by  the  mind.  What  we  know  more 
and  beyond  is  the  constant  connection  of  one 
sense  object  with  another,  or  the  absence  of  one 
when  another  is  present.  The  swan  which  we 
can  touch  and  see  we  call  real.  The  swan  that 
floats  to  the  eye  beneath  the  surface,  but  which 
we  cannot  find  with  the  hand,  we  call  unreal ;  and 
yet  the  one  is  as  real  to  the  eye  as  the  other  is  to 
the  hand.  Hartley  Coleridge,  when  five  years 
old,  did  not  answer  to  his  name  when  called,  but 
said,  "  Which  Hartley  is  it  ?  What,  is  there  more 
than  one?  Yes,  there  is  a  deal  of  Hartleys. 
How  so  ?  There  is  picture  Hartley,  and  shadow 
Hartley,  and  echo  Hartley,  and  catch-me-fast 
Hartley."  *  "  Which  is  the  lying  sense,  feeling 
or  seeing?"  said  Cheselden's  blind  boy  just  re- 
stored to  sight,  as  he  guessed  with  his  eye  and 

*  Poems  and  Memoir,  Vol.  I.  page  xxvii. 


12  Ttishop  George  Berkeley. 

fumbled  with  his  hands  in  the  new  and  strange 
universe  of  vision  that  had  just  been  new  cre- 
ated for  and  by  his  unsealed  eyesight*  But  we 
do  not  rest  contented  with  a  single  sense.  We 
do  not  believe  in  the  things  outside  till  we  learn 
to  connect  what  we  see  with  what  we  touch,  and 
what  we  touch  with  what  we  see.  But  how  do 
we  learn  to  do  this  ?  Simply  as  we  believe  that 
we  are  in  an  honest  universe, — a  universe  which 
is  true  in  the  signals  or  indicia  which  it  presents 
for  our  confidence.  For  this  belief  our  only  secu- 
rity is  in  the  reasonableness  and  truth  of  the  one 
comprehensive  mind  that%is  ever  acting  upon 
our  senses,  and  must  be  true  to  the  signals  which 
He  gives.  Hence  we  not  only  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being  in  God,  but  we  hear,  and  see, 
and  touch  by  the  signs  to  which  He  wakens  our 
senses.  Our  own  minds  we  know,  because  we 
use  them.  God  we  know  by  those  combinations 
of  sensations  in  which  He  is  always  present  and 
true.  Other  minds  we  know  through  the  occa- 
sional sense-combinations  which  we  call  their 
bodies.  But  God  we  always  apprehend,  because 
*  Phil.  Trans.,  No.  402. 


TSishop  George  Berkeley.  13 

it  is  only  as  we  believe  in  Him  that  we  can  con- 
nect a  group  of  sensations  into  a  material  thing, 
one  sensation  with  one  or  many  as  a  cause  or  an 
effect,  or  interpret  their  presence  or  absence  by 
fixed  and  rational  laws.  We  shut  our  eyes,  and 
the  visible  creation  swims  before  our  vision  and 
seems  about  to  sink  into  nothing ;  but  as  it  seems 
to  vanish,  it  is  caught  and  held  back  by  the  ever- 
present  thought  and  hand  of  God.  We  open 
them  again,  and  the  universe  rises  into  a  vision 
of  beauty,  as  fresh  and  glowing  when  re-created 
by  His  fiat  as  when  God  for  the  first  time  said 
let  there  be  light  and  there  was  light !  To  use 
Berkeley's  own  language,  "  Some  truths  there 
are,  so  near  and  obvious  to  the  mind  that  a  man 
need  only  open  his  eyes  to  see  them.  Such  I 
take  this  important  one  to  be, —  to  wit,  that  all 
the  choir  of  heaven  and  furniture  of  the  earth, 
in  a  word,  all  those  bodies  which  comprise  the 
mighty  form  of  the  world,  have  not  any  subsist- 
ence without  the  mind ;  that  their  being  is  to  be 
perceived  or  known  ;  that,  consequently,  so  long 
as  they  are  not  actually  perceived  by  me,  or  do 
not  exist  in  my  mind,  or  that  of  any  other 


14  Ttisbop  George  Berkeley. 

created  spirit,  they  must  either  have  no  existence 
at  all,  or  else  subsist  in  the  mind  of  some 
Eternal  spirit." 

"You,  it  seems,  stare  to  find  that  God  is  not  far 
away  from  every  one  of  us,  and  that  in  Him  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being;  you,  who,  in  the 
beginning  of  this  morning's  conference,  thought  it 
strange  that  God  should  leave  himself  without  a  wit- 
ness, do  now  think  it  strange  the  witness  should  be 
so  full  and  clear.  Ale.  I  must  own  I  do,  *  *  * 
and  never  imagined  it  could  be  pretended  that  we  saw 
God  with  our  fleshly  eyes  as  plain  as  we  see  any 
human  person  whatsoever,  and  that  He  daily  speaks  to 
our  senses  in  a  manifest  and  clear  dialect.  Cri.  This 
language  hath  a  necessary  connection  with  knowledge, 
wisdom,  and  goodness ;  it  is  equivalent  to  a  constant 
creation,  betokening  an  immediate  act  of  power  and 
providence ;  it  cannot  be  accounted  for  by  mechani- 
cal principles,  by  atoms,  attractions,  or  effluvia.  The 
instantaneous  production  and  reproduction  of  so  many 
signs  combined,  dissolved,  transposed,  diversified,  and 
adapted  to  such  an  endless  variety  of  purposes,  ever 
shifting  with  the  occasions  and  suited  to  them,  being 
utterly  inexplicable  and  unaccountable  by  the  laws  of 
motion,  by  chance,  by  fate,  or  the  like  blind  principles, 


Ttishop  George  Berkeley.  15 

doth  set  forth  and  testify  the  immediate  operation  of  a 
spirit  or  thinking  being;  and  not  merely  of  a  spirit 
which  every  motion  or  gravitation  may  possibly  infer, 
but  of  one  wise,  good,  and  provident  spirit  which 
directs  and  rules  and  governs  the  world."  Ale.  Dial. 
n 


This,  in  brief,  is  the  Theistic  Idealism  with 
which  Berkeley  startled  the  world  at  the  age  of 
25.  Paradoxical  as  it  seemed,  it  was  expounded 
with  singular  clearness,  illustrated  with  minute 
detail,  defended  with  youthful  ardor,  and  enforced 
with  religious  fervor.  It  is  not  at  all  surpris- 
ing that  it  attracted  immediate  attention  to  its 
author,  and  made  a  place  for  him  in  every  circle, 
if  only  as  an  object  of  wonder.  It  was,  however, 
more  easy  to  wonder  and  stare  at  him  than  it 
was  to  answer  or  silence  him. 

The  facts  on  which  Berkeley  builds  had  been 
familiar  for  centuries,  having  started  many  a 
curious  or  skeptical  inquiry.*  But  in  almost 
every  case  the  expounder  had  treated  them  in 
such  a  fashion  as  either  to  entangle  his  reader 

*  Cf.  Malebranche,  Rech.  de  la  Verite",  1.  ch.  9;  Glanville,  Scepsis  Scien- 
tifica,  ch.  5  ;  Molyneux,  Dioptrics  ;  Locke's  Essay,  4th  ed.  ch.  ix.  $8. 


1 6  "Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

in  a  maze  of  refined  distinctions,  or  bewilder  him 
with  a  brilliant  show  of  dazzling  fireworks  — 
silencing  or  bewildering,  but  not  convincing  him. 
Berkeley's  statements,  on  the  other  hand,  seem 
as  clear  as  the  sunlight  and  as  solid  as  the 
pavement.  He  feels  his  way  as  cautiously  as  a 
blind  man.  He  asks  you  if  you  are  sure  and 
steady  at  every  step ;  and  then,  on  a  sudden, 
he  turns  upon  you  and  asks  where  is  the  ma- 
terial universe.  You  look  for  it,  and  find  that 
as  a  solid  reality  it  is  gone ;  and  yet  you  are 
confident  that  you  have  destroyed  or  lost  it  by 
your  own  honest  thinking.  Your  philosophic 
friend  is  so  cool,  so  clear,  so  sure  in  every  step, 
that  you  seem  to  have  thought  out  every  con- 
clusion for  yourself.  At  all  events,  you  cannot 
lay  your  hand  upon  any  single  step  and  say  it 
was  false.  The  illusion  is  as  when  you  look 
into  a  mountain  lake  whose  margin  is  over- 
looked by  a  forest-clad  mountain.  You  see 
every  inch  of  its  bottom  as  you  peer  over  the 
edge  of  your  floating  boat.  All  is  clear  and 
sure,  when  in  an  instant  the  reflected  mountain 
more  than  half  displaces  the  oozy  bottom, — a 


"Bishop  George  Berkeley.  17 

pictured  show,  indeed,  in  all  its  pomp  of  color 
and  shadow,  but  so  vivid  that  for  an  instant  you 
cannot  tell  which  is  the  reality  and  which  the 
reflected  image. 

The  effect  of  Berkeley's  Idealism  was  no  nine 
days'  wonder.  It  became  the  problem  of  the 
century  which  followed ;  we  should  rather  say  it 
has  continued  to  be  the  problem  of  nearly  two 
centuries  since.  Hume  took  up  what  seemed 
to  him  a  similar  line  of  thought,  and  attempted 
to  disintegrate  the  mind  into  a  bundle  of  ideas, 
as  Berkeley  had  sought  to  resolve  matter  into  a 
series  of  impressions.  Reid,  who  was  roused 
by  Hume's  extremes  to  oppose  both  Hume  and 
Berkeley,  confesses  to  have  been  originally  a 
convert  to  Berkeley's  theory.  Reid  was  fol- 
lowed in  the  direction  of  reaction  by  the  learned 
and  logical  Hamilton.  On  the  continent,  sixty 
years  after  Berkeley  composed  his  youthful 
Essay,  Kant  declares  that  he  had  been  wakened 
by  Hume  and  Berkeley  from  the  dogmatic  slum- 
ber in  which  he  had  been  trained ;  and  after 
Kant,  and,  as  it  would  seem,  by  many  growths 
and  undergrowths,  lo  !  this  little  sapling  which 
4 


1 8  "Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

our  youthful  friend  planted  in  Dublin,  has 
spread  abroad  into  the  great  Banyan  tree  of 
Modern  German  Metaphysics,  which  has  now 
struck  its  roots  down  from  above,  and  then 
thrust  its  shoots  up  from  beneath  till  its  pil- 
lared shade  has  become  a  bewildering  maze.* 
What  is  still  more  surprising  is  that  the  most 
distinguished  men  of  the  materialistic  school  in 
England  at  the  present  day,  with  rare  excep- 
tions, agree  with  Berkeley  in  resolving  the  mate- 
rial world  into  groups  of  sensations  with  "  a  per- 
manent possibility  of  sensations,"  and  the  mind 
into  "  a  series  of  feelings  which  is  aware  of  itself 
as  past  and  future."  This  is  the  painfully  elab- 
orated result  of  the  life-long  speculations  of 
John  Stuart  Mill,  who  cannot  be  charged  with 
any  want  of  clearness,  and  whose  system  of 
Logic  is  a  masterpiece  of  lucid  statement 
and  rigid  consecution.  Mill  utterly  repudiates 
Dr.  Johnson's  argumentum  baculinum  against 
Berkeley,  but  when  he  attempts  to  follow  or 
correct  him,  he  plunges  us  into  a  dim  and  misty 
cloud,  without  the  play  of  that  iridescent  light 
*  See  Note  B. 


^Bishop  George  Berkeley.  19 

which  Berkeley  sheds  on  every  thought.  Her- 
bert Spencer  and  all  the  evolutionists  resolve 
matter  into  sensations,  and  sensations  into 
"nerve  shocks"  which  are  more  complicated  as 
they  ascend  into  those  higher  potencies  which 
men  call  matter  and  spirit  or  mind ;  but  they 
find  no  God  either  within  or  behind  these 
aspiring  and  ascending  sensations.  George  H. 
Lewes  and  most  of  the  positivists  choose  to 
resolve  what  they  call  phenomena  into  sensa- 
tions, but  make  no  provision,  as  does  Berkeley, 
for  a  mind  to  originate  or  interpret  nature  or 
any  agency  which  either  uses  or  explains  the 
scanty  relationships  by  which  they  explain  na- 
ture or  justify  either  induction  or  evolution.* 

I  am  not  here  to  defend  Berkeley's  doctrine 
of  Ideas.  I  am  only  desirous  to  defend  him  from 
being  deemed  a  philosophical  visionary  for  hold- 
ing opinions  which  have  been  taught  with  more 
or  less  consistency  by  eminent  individuals  and 
famous  schools.  I  am  quite  content  to  rest  his 
defence  on  the  unquestioned  fact  that  he  forced 
the  philosophical  world  to  grapple  earnestly  with 
*  See  Note  C. 


20  ^Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

his  single  problem  for  nearly  two  centuries,  and 
that  some  of  the  most  outspoken  and  positive  of 
materialists  of  the  present  day  are  the  most 
openly  confessed  of  Berkeley's  disciples  as  the 
outcome  of  all  their  physics  and  metaphysics. 

While,  then,  our  old  and  new  fashioned  mate- 
rialists agree  with  Berkeley  in  resolving  matter 
into  sensations,  and  with  Hume  in  resolving 
mind  into  feelings,  they  differ  from  Berkeley  in 
one  most  important  particular.  That  particu- 
lar is  that  Berkeley's  Idealism  was  character- 
istically Theistic.  He  was  a  Theist,  not  as  a 
theologian  or  a  Christian,  but  as  a  philoso- 
pher. He  could  not  complete  his  theory  of 
Ideas  and  find  any  order  or  trustworthiness 
in  them,  without  God  to  produce  and  regulate 
them.  If  matter  is  nothing  but  ideas  or  sensa- 
tions, still  sensations  require  a  spirit  to  feel  or 
know  them.  If  matter  does  not  exist  to  produce 
them,  there  must  be  some  agent  to  originate  and 
sustain  them,  and  that  cause  must  be  an  eternal 
and  all-embracing  mind.  Not  only  does  he  orig- 
inate these  ideas,  but  he  must  produce  them  in 
those  combinations  and  in  that  order  which  justi- 


,    Bishop  George  Berkeley.  21 

fies  the  common  sense  of  experience  and  the 
theories  of  science.  If  every  color  we  discern  is 
an  idea  or  impression  produced  in  our  minds  by 
the  agency  of  God,  if  every  touch  is  the  same, 
much  more  does  the  constant  combination  of 
every  color  with  its  appropriate  touch,  require 
his  faithful  care.  According  to  Berkeley's  the- 
ory, we  need  God  to  explain  the  one  as  truly  as 
to  explain  the  other.  Without  this  faith  in  God 
we  cannot  even  justify  the  experience  of  common 
life.  Without  this  faith  we  cannot  explain  our 
confidence  in  the  uniformity  and  stability  of  na- 
ture's operations.  Without  this  faith  we  cannot 
justify  our  common  sense  and  practical  wisdom. 
Much  less  without  it  can  we  defend  our  faith 
in  the  theories  or  the  experiments  of  science. 

We  may  think  as  we  will  about  Berkeley's 
theory  of  matter  and  of  ideas,  but  as  we  listen 
to  the  bold  challenge  of  his  youth,  that  he  in- 
tended to  drive  matter  out  of  the  universe  that 
he  might  bring  into  it  the  living  God,  and  trace 
the  proof  that  all  the  conflicts  which  have  fol- 
lowed have  served  to  deepen  the  conviction  that 
all  true  science  supposes  God  to  be  a  thinker 


22  Ttishop  George  Berkeley. 

and  the  student  of  science  to  be  an  interpreter 
of  God's  thoughts,  we  are  disposed  to  honor  his 
philosophical  sagacity,  as  truly  as  to  admire  his 
intellectual  courage. 

If  Berkeley  did  not  drive  matter  out  of  the 
universe  as  effectually  and  as  easily  as  he  imag- 
ined he  could,  he  certainly  did  bring  in  God  as  a 
permanent  necessity  for  the  satisfactory  explan- 
ation of  physical  facts  and  their  relations.  As  the 
result  of  all  the  controversies  that  have  followed, 
so  far  as  anything  of  this  kind  can  be  said  to  be 
settled,  this  is  settled,  that  God,  as  self-existent 
reason  and  perhaps  as  rational  love,  must  be 
assumed  as  the  one  fundamental  axiom  of  scien- 
ific  thought. 

I  have  dwelt  longer  upon  the  history  and 
real  import  of  Berkeley's  Idealism  because  it  is 
often  spoken  slightingly  of  by  those  who  look 
upon  its  superficial  aspects,  and  know  little  or 
nothing  of  its  place  in  the  history  of  physical  and 
metaphysical  theories.  Regarded  by  itself  alone, 
even  were  it  only  a  philosophical  romance,  it  was 
a  remarkable  product  not  merely  for  a  youth, 
but  for  a  student  of  any  age.  But  looked  at  in 


"Bishop  George  Berkeley.  23 

its  place  in  the  history  of  opinion,  it  is  worthy  of 
the  highest  honor.  It  is  still  more  remarkable 
for  its  capacity  to  stimulate  and  sustain  inquiry, 
especially  when  we  trace  its  fermenting  and 
stimulating  power  through  the  great  philosoph- 
ical revolutions  of  the  last  two  centuries.  ^x1 
I  may  not  omit  to  notice  another  significant 
passage  in  the  history  of  Berkeley's  university 
life, — his  celebrated  Sermons  on  Passive  Obe- 
dience, which  attracted  some  attention  in  those 
excitable  times,  and  had  more  or  less  influence 
on  his  political  fortunes.  In  these  sermons  he 
maintains  the  doctrine  that  an  existing  or  es- 
tablished civil  government  may  never  be  law- 
fully resisted  or  overthrown.  He  defended  this 
position,  not  on  the  ground  of  divine  or  heredi- 
tary authority  or  right,  but  on  strictly  ethical  prin- 
ciples, contending  that  no  individual  or  party  can 
ever  be  sure  that  the  evils  incident  to  a  political 
revolution  will  not  be  greater  than  those  involved 
in  the  continuance  of  a  government,  however 
bad  may  be  its  administration.  This  was  another 
instance  of  his  personal  and  logical  boldness,  as 
it  is  another  exemplification  of  his  clearness  of 


24  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

thought  and  diction.  It  gave  him  additional  no- 
toriety just  at  the  time  when  he  left  the  life  of  a 
scholar  and  became  more  or  less  a  man  of  the 
world,  in  times  of  political  excitement  and  of  gen- 
eral venality  and  corruption.  For  thirteen  con- 
secutive years  previous  to  this  he  had  resided  at 
the  university,  and  received  all  the  degrees  and 
perquisites  to  which  he  might  properly  aspire. 
For  eight  years  afterwards,  this  connection  was 
maintained,  with  renewed  permissions  of  ab- 
sence, and  he  lived  more  or  less  the  life  of  a 
man  of  the  world.  First  he  visits  London  and  is 
presented  at  court  making  the  acquaintance  of 
the  ministers  of  state,  the  bishops,  the  leading 
writers,  as  Addison,  Steele,  Pope,  and  Boling- 
broke,  apparently  under  the  special  direction  of 
Dean  Swift,  his  patron  and  friend.  He  seems 
everywhere  to  have  been  looked  upon  with 
wondering  curiosity  as  a  propounder  of  para- 
doxes that  could  not  easily  be  answered,  and  yet 
he  everywhere  wins  his  way  as  one  of  the  most 
delightful  of  companions  and  the  best  of  men. 
He  is  stared  at,  and  almost  feared  for  his 
strange  notions,  and  is  as  universally  loved  for 


Tttsbop  George  Berkeley.  25 

his  charming  ardor,  simplicity,  and  wit.  The 
stately  Atterbury,  when  asked  by  his  relative, 
Lord  Berkeley,  what  he  thought  of  his  kins- 
man at  their  first  interview,  replied  :  "  So  much 
understanding,  so  much  knowledge,  so  much 
innocence,  and  such  humility,  I  did  not  think 
had  been  the  portion  of  angels  till  I  saw  this 
gentleman."  Pope's  well-known  lines,  written 
long  after,  when  he  had  become  a  bishop, 
express  the  same  enthusiastic  admiration,  .which 
is  the  more  significant  because  of  its  cynical 
accompaniments : 

Even  in  a  bishop  I  can  spy  desert. 
Seeker  is  decent ;  Rundel  has  a  heart. 
Manners  with  candor  are  to  Benson  given. 
To  Berkeley,  every  virtue  under  heaven. 

The  most  of  these  eight  years  of  wandering 
and  uncertain  life  were  spent  on  the  continent ; 
first,  as  a  chaplain  to  the  Earl  of  Peterborough  in 
Italy,  and,  subsequently,  as  tutor  and  companion 
to  pupils  and  friends.  The  letters  and  journals 
preserved  from  this  period  are  brilliant  and 
instructive.  They  indicate  quick  wit,  high 

5 


26  'Bishop  George  ^Berkeley. 

culture,  and  varied  knowledge,  combined  with 
sincere  and  fervent  religious  feeling ;  a  combi- 
nation of  excellencies  not  so  common  then  as 
since. 

On  Berkeley's  return  to  England  in  1720,  he 
found  the  kingdom  in  a  condition  of  turmoil 
and  almost  despair,  consequent  on  the  explosion 
of  the  South  Sea  Scheme.  His  ardent  soul,  his 
quick  wit  and  intense  moral  convictions  found 
utterance  in  a  paper  entitled  "  An  Essay  towards 
preventing  the  Ruin  of  Great  Britain,"  which  is  at 
once  simple,  thoughtful,  keen,  and  Christian, — 
abounding  in  practical  suggestions  concerning 
the  increase  of  national  wealth,  the  care  of 
the  poor,  the  maintenance  of  roads,  the  intro- 
duction of  manufactures,  the  fostering  of  art; 
coupled  with  fervid  denunciations  of  gambling, 
licentiousness,  and  the  neglect  of  religion  among 
the  higher  classes.  None  but  a  bold  and  ardent 
soul  like  his  could  venture  to  address  his  fellow- 
countrymen  in  words  so  simple  and  so  strong, 
and  expect  to  be  listened  to.  None  but  a  man 
profoundly  religious  could  utter  words  so  biting 
in  a  spirit  of  gentleness  and  fervor.  This  Essay 


Ttisbop  George  ^Berkeley.  27 

is  of  the  utmost  significance,  as  explaining  the 
subsequent  movements  of  his  life  and  especially 
his  mission  to  America. 

Not  long  after  his  return  to  England,  in  the 
year  1721,  he  was  made  chaplain  to  the  Lord- 
Lieutenant  of  Ireland ;  the  year  following  he  was 
made  dean  of  Dromore,  having  previously  been 
Senior  Fellow  of  his  University,  and  lecturer  in 
Hebrew  and  Greek.  In  1723  he  met  with  a 
singular  piece  of  good  fortune,  which  deserves 
to  be  noticed  as  explaining  in  part  the  execu- 
tion of  his  plans  with  respect  to  America.  Miss 
Esther  Van  Homrigh,  the  Vanessa  of  Dean 
Swift's  unhappy  fate  and  memory,  happened  to 
meet  Berkeley  for  once  only  at  her  mother's 
house,  perhaps  accompanied  by  the  Dean,  her 
unlucky  and,  as  some  would  say,  her  faithless 
lover.  This  was  not  long,  as  it  would  seem, 
before  the  confession  which  she  extorted  from 
the  latter,  that  he  had  already  been  secretly 
married  to  Stella.  She  was  so  chagrined  at  this 
intelligence,  and  so  alienated  from  the  Dean, 
that  she  at  once  destroyed  the  will  in  which  she 
had  constituted  Swift  her  sole  heir,  and  gave 


28  Tlishop  George  Berkeley. 

half  her  estate,  some  three  thousand  pounds  and 
more,  to  Berkeley,  the  acquaintance  of  an  hour. 
This  was  in  1723.  In  1724  he  was  presented 
to  the  deanery  of  Derry,  with  an  income  of 
eleven  hundred  pounds,  and  found  himself,  for 
the  first  time  in  his  life,  in  easy  if  not  in  affluent 
circumstances.  And  yet,  in  the  same  summer, 
we  find  him  posting  to  London  with  a  letter  from 
Swift  to  the  Lord-Lieutenant,  in  which  he  writes 
of  Berkeley,  after  a  humorous  introduction : 
"  He  is  an  absolute  philosopher  with  regard  to 
money,  titles,  and  power,  and  for  three  years 
past  has  been  struck  with  a  notion  of  founding  a 
college  at  the  Bermudas  with  a  charter  from  the 
Crown.  He  has  seduced  several  of  the  hope- 
fullest  young  clergymen  and  others  here,  many 
of  them  well  provided  for,  and  all  in  the  fairest 
way  for  preferment,  but  in  England  his  conquests 
are  greater,  and  I  doubt  will  spread  very  far 
this  winter.  He  showed  me  a  little  tract  which 
he  designs  to  publish ;  and  there  you  will  see 
his  whole  scheme  of  a  life  academic,  philosophical 
— of  a  college  founded  for  Indian  scholars  and 
missionaries;  where  he  exorbitantly  proposes 


Tlisbop  George  "Berkeley.  29 

a  whole  hundred  pounds  a  year  for  himself,  fifty 
pounds  for  a  fellow,  and  ten  for  a  student.  His 
heart  will  break  if  his  deanery  be  not  taken  from 
him  and  left  to  your  Excellency's  disposal." 
*  *  *  "And,  therefore,  I  entreat  your  Ex- 
cellency to  use  such  persuasions  as  will  keep 
one  of  the  first  men  of  this  kingdom  at  home, 
or  assist  him  by  your  credit  to  compass  his 
romantic  design." 

It  would  seem  that  this  missionary  project, 
or  something  like  it,  had  been  in  his  mind  ever 
since  his  return  to  England  from  the  continent, 
and  the  shock  which  he  had  received  from  the 
South  Sea  explosion  with  the  revelations  which 
it  had  given  of  the  individual  and  social  corrup- 
tion in  the  Old  World  in  respect  to  manners 
and  morals  and  faith.  From  this  scene,  which 
excited  only  disgust  and  despair,  he  turned  to 
the  New  World  with  ardent  and  enthusiastic 
hope.  His  well-known  lines,  though  evincing 
little  poetic  genius,  are  the  sober  expres- 
sion of  his  enthusiastic  aspirations  and  his 
hopeful  faith.  They  are  at  once  a  poem  and 
prophecy,  and  they  have  made  his  name  a 


30  Ttishop  George  Berkeley. 

household  word  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific 
coast. 

The  Muse,  disgusted  at  an  age  and  clime, 
Barren  of  every  glorious  theme  ; 
In  distant  lands  now  waits  a  better  time, 
Producing  subjects  worthy  fame. 


There  shall  be  sung  another  golden  age, 
The  rise  of  empires  and  of  arts, 
The  good  and  great  inspiring  epic  rage, 
The  wisest  heads  and  noblest  hearts. 

•• 
Not  such  as  Europe  breeds  in  her  decay, 

Such  as  she  bred  when  fresh  and  young, 
When  heavenly  flame  did  animate  her  clay, 
By  future  poets  shall  be  sung. 

Westward  the  course  of  empire  takes  its  way, 
The  four  first  acts  already   past, 
A  fifth  shall  close  the  drama  with  the  day, 
Time's  noblest  offspring  is  the  last. 

His  accession  to  a  large  income  only  kindled 
his  zeal  and  inspired  his  courage  for  his  new 


Ttishop  George  Berkeley.  31 

plan.  "  Yesterday,"  he  writes,  "I  received  my 
patent  for  the  best  deanery  in  the  kingdom,  that 
of  Derry.  It  is  said  to  be  worth  ^1500  per 
annum,  but  I  do  not  consider  it  with  a  view  to 
enriching  myself,  and  shall  be  perfectly  con- 
tented if  it  facilitates  and  recommends  my 
scheme  of  Bermuda."  Again,  earlier,  he  writes  : 
"  Here  is  something  that  will  surprise  your 
Lordship,  as  it  doth  me.  Mrs.  Hester  Van  Hom- 
righ,  a  lady  to  whom  I  was  a  perfect  stranger, 
having  never  in  my  life  exchanged  a  word  with 
her,  died  on  Sunday  night.  Yesterday  her  will 
was  opened,  by  which  it  appears  that  I  am  con- 
stituted executor,  the  advantage  whereof  is  com- 
puted by  those  who  understand  her  affairs  to  be 
worth  ^3000.  *  *  *  I  know  not  what  your 
thoughts  are  on  the  long  account  I  sent  you  from 
London  to  Bath  of  my  Bermuda  scheme,  which 
is  now  stronger  on  my  mind  than  ever,  this 
providential  event  having  made  many  things 
easy  in  my  private  affairs,  which  were  otherwise 
before." 

The  details  of  Berkeley's  plan,  the  reasons 
for  the  selection  of  the  Bermuda  Islands,  and 


32  Tiisbop  George  Berkeley. 

the  motives  to  the  achievement  are  given  at 
length  in  the  tract  entitled  "  A  Proposal  for  the 
better  Supplying  of  our  Churches  in  our  Foreign 
Plantations,  and  for  Converting  the  Savage 
Americans  to  Christianity."  It  would  seem  that 
a  general  plan  to  this  effect  had  long  been  seeth- 
ing in  his  mind,  before  the  legacy  of  Miss  Van 
Homrigh  and  his  generous  salary  had  placed 
him  in  a  position  to  assume  some  responsibility 
and  authority.  The  Bermuda  Islands  were  for 
many  years  esteemed  the  most  favorable  loca- 
tion for  his  Christian  college. 

For  three  years  after  this  plan  had  become  a 
purpose  he  labored  incessantly  to  interest  in  it 
men  of  political  influence  in  church  and  state  in 
and  about  London.  Such  was  his  zeal  and 
skill,  that  he  converted  the  -most  indifferent  and 
obstinate  into  warm  patrons  and  friends.  Five 
thousand  pounds  were  subscribed  by  private 
individuals.  King  George  I.  and  his  Prime 
Minister,  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  were  committed 
to  the  project,  and  in  1725  a  charter  passed  the 
seals,  constituting  the  College  of  St.  Paul's, 
with  Berkeley  at  its  head.  In  the  year  follow- 


Bishop  George  Berkeley.  33 

ing,  owing  to  Berkeley's  pertinacity,  twenty 
thousand  pounds  sterling  were  granted  for  the 
college  out  of  certain  lands  sold  in  St.  Christo- 
pher's Island,  which  promised  to  bring  much 
more  into  the  royal  treasury.  The  distinctively 
missionary  character  of  Berkeley's  enterprise 
ought  not  to  be  overlooked,  especially  at  a  time 
when  the  opportunity  and  the  obligation  are  un- 
derstood and  acknowledged  as  never  before  of 
propagating  Christianity  by  means  of  institu- 
tions of  Christian  learning;  and  this  both  in 
the  destitute  portions  of  our  own  country  and 
in  those  countries  where  Christianity  is  scarcely 
known  as  a  faith  or  a  spiritual  power.  That  a 
man  like  Berkeley,  who  had  been  the  favorite  of 
courtiers  and  prelates  and  of  royalty  itself,  who 
was  admired  and  gazed  at  as  the  discoverer 
and  defender  of  a  new  philosophy,  fraught  as 
he  believed  with  the  most  important  principles 
for  Science  and  Faith,  and  was  animated  by  the 
hope  of  fresh  discoveries  in  the  field  of  specula- 
tion, should  have  been  moved  by  the  impulse  to 
plant  a  Christian  university  in  a  lonely  and 
storm-vexed  island  and  submit  himself  to  nar- 
6 


34  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

row  conditions  of  life  for  the  spiritual  welfare  of 
the  unruly  colonists  and  the  horrid  savages,  of 
which  he  had  received  such  uninviting  reports, 
and  be  able  to  kindle  in  others  an  enthusiasm 
similar  to  his  own,  is  a  singular  phenomenon, 
even  in  the  history  of  Christian  devotion.  That 
the  disgust  and  despair  which  were  excited  by 
the  contemplation  of  the  rottenness  of  the  old 
civilization  and  its  effete  Christianity  should  have 
elevated  his  faith  and  hope  to  the  confidence  of 
prophecy,  invests  his  character  and  his  mission 
with  more  than  a  romantic  interest,  while  it  ex- 
alts him  to  a  high  place  in  the  roll  of  Christian 
Saints. 

After  many  delays  and  disappointments,  such 
as  are  incident  to  enterprises  of  this  kind,  in 
September,  1728,  at  the  age  of  43,  having 
been  recently  married  to  a  lady  of  kindred 
tastes  and  purposes,  he  embarked  in  a  ship 
of  250  tons  for  Rhode  Island,  where  the  party 
landed  after  a  voyage  of  little  more  than  four 
months.  The  party  consisted  of  the  Dean 
and  his  wife,  a  lady  friend,  Miss  Handcock,  two 
gentlemen  friends,  John,  afterwards  Sir  John 


Bishop  George  Berkeley.  35 

James,  Bart,  Mr.  Richard  Dalton,  Mr.  John 
Smybert,  an  artist  of  some  promise,  who  was  to 
be  professor  of  architecture,  painting,  and  draw- 
ing, and  Mr.  Peter  Harrison,  also  an  architect. 
Mr.  Smybert  and  Mr.  Harrison  afterwards  settled 
in  Boston, —  the  first  as  a  painter  and  archi- 
tect, and  the  second  as  an  architect.  The 
first  building  in  that  city  erected  from  Smy- 
bert's  designs  was  the  old  State  House ;  and  the 
most  noticeable  building  of  Harrison's  was  the 
King's  Chapel.  Smybert's  portraits  are  numer- 
ous and,  aside  from  the  interest  which  pertains 
to  them  as  the  earliest  portraits  painted  in  the 
country  by  a  trained  artist,  are  at  least  highly 
respectable  for  their  time. 

We  are  not  informed  why  Berkeley  did  not 
sail  directly  for  the  Bermudas.  It  is,  probably, 
that  he  thought  it  well  not  to  commit  himself  to 
the  establishment  of  his  college  till  the  royal 
promise  was  fulfilled.  The  reasons  are  mani- 
fold why  he  selected  Rhode  Island  and  New- 
port as  the  place  of  his  temporary  sojourn. 
Newport  was  then  one  of  the  most  prosperous 
seaports  on  the  entire  Atlantic  coast,  with  a 


36  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

free  harbor,  easy  of  access,  and  communicating 
readily  with  all  the  English  islands  and  colo- 
nies, maintaining  an  active  trade  in  all  kinds 
of  commodities,  including  negroes  kidnapped  in 
Africa.  It  was  also  a  promising  place  for  the 
advantageous  investment  in  land  of  the  funds 
of  the  college.  It  was  a  place  of  unlimited  tol- 
eration for  religious  opinions,  and  a  free  port  for 
the  exchange  of  goods  of  all  descriptions.  The 
presence  in  this  town  of  one  or  more  mission- 
aries at  large  of  the  Church  of  England  was 
an  additional  attraction.  Mr.  Honeyman,  the 
oldest,  had  been  at  Newport  twenty-five  years.* 
Trinity  Church,  in  which  he  officiated,  is  still 
standing,  with  the  organ  which  Berkeley  gave 
to  the  parish.  Across  the  bay,  on  the  Narra- 
gansett  peninsula,  Dr.  McSparran  was  the 
shepherd  of  a  wealthy  and  rather  unruly 
flock  of  Rhode  Island  planters,  each  one  of 

*  History  of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  Narragansett,  Rhode 
Island,  etc.,  etc.,  by  Wilkins  Updike.  New- York :  Henry  M. 
Onderdonk,  1847.  The  appendix  contains  "  America  Dis- 
sected," by  Rev.  Dr.  McSparran,  whose  representations  of 
the  people  of  Connecticut  are  in  striking  contrast  with  those 
of  Berkeley. 


Bishop  George  Berkeley.  37 

whom  had  his  garret  full  of  slaves  and  his 
stables  full  of  Narragansett  pacers, — who  be- 
lieved in  good  cheer  and  roystering  hospitality 
quite  as  fervently  as  they  did  in  the  Church  of 
England,  to  which  the  worthy  Dr.  held  them  by 
a  somewhat  doubtful  tenure  of  spirituality. 
The  free  and  fantastic  genius  loci  even  now 
seems  to  cast  a  bewildering  glamour  over  the 
scenery  of  this  entire  region,  and  to  infuse  an 
exciting  element  into  its  very  atmosphere. 
Such  a  fine  nature  as  Berkeley's  would  respond 
to  these  influences,  and  also  respond  to  the 
hereditary  enthusiasm  of  the  population  for 
freedom  and  truth  and  spiritual  activity.  In- 
deed, Roger  Williams  and  Berkeley  are  in 
many  particulars  kindred  spirits.  It  is  worthy 
of  notice  also  that  here  and  there  was  a  little 
community  of  Friends,  who  were  ready  to  re- 
spond to  all  that  Berkeley  could  teach  about 
the  superiority  of  spirit  to  matter  and  the 
potency  and  purity  of  the  spiritual  life.  It  is 
not  surprising  that  Berkeley  found  the  air  of 
Newport  so  sweet  and  exhilarating,  and  that 
his  poetic  eye  rested  upon  its  landscape  with 


38  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

enthusiastic  delight.  It  is  worthy  of  notice, 
also,  that  there  has  never  been  a  time  since 
Berkeley  blessed  Rhode  Island  with  his  pres- 
ence, when  his  theory  has  not  been  fervently 
held  with  poetic  fervor,  and  ably  defended 
with  logical  acuteness  by  some  leading  spirit 
among  its  citizens.  Witness,  Job  Durfee,  au- 
thor of  "The  Pan  Idea"  and  Rowland  G. 
Hazard,  author  of  "Man  a  Creative  First  Cause" 
etc.,  etc. 

After  residing  in  the  town  for  some  five  or 
six  months,  he  purchased  an  estate  of  ninety-six 
acres  of  land,  which  he  called  Whitehall,  situated 
about  three  miles  east  from  the  harbor,  on  what 
is  still  known  as  Honeyman's  Hill.  It  is  alto- 
gether probable  that  he  regarded  this  pur- 
chase as  an  investment,  there  being  traditional 
testimony  at  least  that  his  speculations  were  as 
enthusiastic  in  respect  to  the  future  value  of  real 
estate  in  that  neighborhood  as  the  most  san- 
guine of  dealers  have  as  yet  entertained.  Here 
he  erected  the  house  which  is  still  standing, — 
of  moderate  size  and  simple  construction,  but 


Bishop  George  Berkeley.  39 

giving  evidence  of  art  and  of  taste.  In  form 
and  material  and  workmanship,  it  is  creditable 
to  its  owner  and  his  architect,  although  it  has  suf- 
fered not  a  little  from  neglect  and  $habby  addi- 
tions. But  the  scenery  can  never  be  marred.  It 
is  the  same  now  as  when  Berkeley's  eye  rested 
upon  it  and  his  pen  described  it,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  loss  of  many  a  surviving  forest  tree 
majestic  in  form  and  size,  and  many  a  shadowy 
wood  setting  off  the  beauty  of  slope  and  lawn, 
or  breaking  against  the  sky  or  ocean.  There 
remain  the  alternations  of  its  gentle  and  abrupt 
undulations,  of  its  glimpses  and  stretches  of  bay 
and  ocean,  of  the  varied  combinations  of  sand 
and  rock  and  turf,  the  latter  always  green  from 
fog  and  shower,  and  the  breeze  that  ever  attends 
the  swell  of  the  restless  ocean.  The  scene  is 
none  the  less  attractive  now  than  when  it  was 
once  the  delightful  home  of  our  philosopher,  who 
loved  nature  with  the  heart  of  the  poet  and 
loved  his  kind  with  the  enthusiasm  of  humanity, 
who  found  God  in  nature  not  more  by  the  nedes- 
sities  of  his  philosophy,  than  by  the  cravings 


40  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

of  his  heart, — who,  with  the  rarest  symmetry, 
combined  in  himself  the  characteristics  of  phi- 
losopher, poet,  and  saint. 

Having  settled  himself  to  the  life  of  a  country 
gentleman,  he  waited  with  whatever  patience 
he  could  command  till  the  ^?o,ooo  of  which  he 
had  been  assured  by  King  and  Parliament 
should  be  forwarded  by  the  order  of  the  Minis- 
ter. But  he  did  not  give  himself  up  to  an  inac- 
tive life.  He  cultivated  the  solid  acres  of  his 
estate  with  as  much  earnestness  as  he  had  specu- 
lated to  the  conclusion  that  they  were  only 
tough  and  intractable  ideas.  He  rejoiced  in 
"the  still  air  of  delightful  studies"  which  his 
temporary  retreat  enforced  upon  him.  He 
preached  now  and  then,  and  all  classes  of  people 
flocked  to  hear  his  winning  and  temperate  words. 
Not  a  few  stubborn  Quakers  were  seen  among 
his  hearers,  though  they  would  neither  bend  the 
knee  nor  lift  their  broad-brimmed  hats.  He 
instituted  a  philosophical  society,  the  outcome 
of  which  still  exists  in  the  famous  Redwood 
Library.  The  condition  of  the  remnants  of  the 
Indian  tribes  and  of  the  negroes  who  were  held 


^Bishop  George  Berkeky.  41 

in  slavery  moved  him  to  Christian  pity,  and  he 
bemoans  the  unchristian  neglect  of  their  spirit- 
ual condition  by  their  masters,  and  the  denial  to 
them  of  Christian  baptism  from  certain  logical 
or  conscientious  scruples.  It  is  interesting  to 
find  in  the  record  on  the  books  of  Trinity  Church 
the  following  entry  of  baptism  :  "June  n,  1731. 
Philip  Berkeley,  Anthony  Berkeley,  Agnes 
Berkeley,  negroes,  received  into  the  church." 

Singularly  enough,  Berkeley  appears  never 
to  have  traveled  in  New  England.  He  did  not 
even  go  to  Boston  till  he  saw  it  on  his  return 
to  England,  though  Smybert  soon  settled  there. 
There  were  obvious  reasons  in  the  badness  of 
the  roads,  and  the  absence  of  post-coaches,  and 
the  limitations  of  sloop  navigation  even  to  New- 
York  and  New  Haven. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  was  altogether  natural 
and  decorous  that  the  few  missionaries  of  the 
Church  of  England  who  were  within  his  reach 
should  be  attracted  to  the  presence  of  a  digni- 
tary so  high  as  a  dean.  Conspicuous  among 
them  was  Rev.  Samuel  Johnson,  of  Stratford, 
Conn.,  who  was  one  of  the  tutors  who  in  1722 
7 


42  Tlishop  George  Berkeley. 

had,  with  the  rector  of  Yale  College,  been  led 
to  question  the  validity  of  any  other  than  Episco- 
pal ordination,  and  with  him  and  another  tutor 
had  resigned  his  office.  In  his  visit  to  England 
for  Episcopal  orders,  a  few  years  before,  he 
had  become  acquainted  with  and  attracted  by 
Berkeley's  ideal  philosophy,  and  could  do  no 
less  than  hasten  to  Newport  and  confer  with  its 
welcome  visitant  in  respect  to  their  common 
faith  and  common  philosophy.  The  result  of 
this  and  other  visits  was  a  warm  personal 
friendship  which  extended  to  the  families  of 
both,  and  was  continued  for  more  than  one 
generation.  First  the  Rev'd,  afterwards  Dr., 
Johnson,  and  subsequently  the  President  of 
Columbia  College,  he  became  a  sturdy  adhe- 
rent of  the  Berkeleian  system,  and  in  1752 
published  a  book  in  its  defence,  which  was 
printed  by  Dr.  Franklin  in  Philadelphia.  It  is 
entitled  "Noetica,  or  Things  relating  to  the 
Mind  or  Understanding,  and  Ethica,  or  Things 
relating  to  the  Behavior."  It  is  able  and  orig- 
inal, and  does  credit  to  the  breadth  and  acute- 
ness  of  its  author.  I 


"Bishop  George  Berkeley.  43 

Johnson,  as  was  natural,  explained  to  his 
curious  and  intelligent  listener  all  that  he  knew 
of  the  social  and  religious  life  of  New  England. 
By  his  influence,  doubtless,  Rector  Williams,  of 
Yale  College,  was  brought  into  correspondence 
with  the  Dean.  The  influence  of  Rev.  Jared 
Eliot  of  Killingworth,  now  Clinton,  the  friend 
of  Dr.  Franklin,  one  of  the  fellows  of  the  col- 
lege, was  also  put  into  requisition  to  interest 
Berkeley  in  the  young  institution.  The  evi- 
dence is  ample  that  Johnson  was  kindly  and 
generous  in  his  charity  towards  the  college 
which  had  educated  him  and  of  which  he  had 
been  an  officer.  It  appears  from  their  corre- 
spondence that  when  Berkeley  at  first  proposed 
to  send  a  few  books  to  the  library  he  was 
doubtful  whether  they  would  be  welcomed,  on 
account  of  their  bearing  upon  the  question  of 
church-polity.  And  yet  from  all  that  this  frank 
correspondence  reveals,  the  attitude  of  both 
these  gentlemen  to  the  college,  which  was  then 
identified  with  the  Congregational  system,  was 
singularly  magnanimous.  The  result  in  the 
subsequent  benefaction  of  Berkeley  is  a  decisive 


44  "Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

proof  that  this  must  have  been  true  of  both.  It 
was  reported  by  one  of  his  hearers  that  Berkeley 
had  taken  the  pains  to  say  in  the  pulpit,  "  Give 
the  devil  his  due,  John  Calvin  was  a  great  man." 
All  his  utterances  with  respect  to  Puritan  and 
Romanist  prove  that  he  was  singularly  broad- 
minded  in  respect  to  all  "who  profess  and  call 
themselves  Christians." 

As  we  have  already  explained,  Berkeley  re- 
garded himself  as  a  mere  sojourner  in  Rhode 
Island.  Some  suggestions  or  overtures  must 
have  been  made  to  induce  him  to  establish  his 
college  at  Newport.  But  he  declined  them  all, 
and  adhered  to  his  original  determination.  Here 
he  waited,  anxiously  expecting  favorable  tidings 
from  England  of  the  dispatch  of  his  long- 
expected  twenty  thousand  pounds,  and  doubtless 
occasionally  chafing  under  the  unexplained  de- 
lay. On  one  occasion  this  delay  is  excused  by 
the  fear  started  by  the  Court  party,  that  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  missionary  college  in  America 
might  tend  to  the  independency  of  the  colonies. 
Under  all  these  vexations  his  resolute  and 
upright  spirit  continually  appears  in  his  letters. 
While  he  insists  on  the  one  hand  that  the  money 


Bishop  George  Berkeley.  45 

pledged  by  king  and  parliament  would  certainly 
be  paid,  and  the  more  inasmuch  as  the  Crown 
had  already  received  three  times  this  amount 
from  the  sales  at  St.  Kitts,  and  while  he  con- 
fesses that  except  for  his  own  pledge  he  would 
sooner  be  in  Londonderry,  of  which  he  was 
dean,  than  to  remain  in  Rhode  Island,  yet  he 
declares  that  he  shall  remain  in  Rhode  Island 
till  the  question  is  decided,  even  at  the  risk  of 
losing  his  deanery  and  its  ample  salary.  This 
suspense  was  finally  terminated.  The  bishop  of 
London  presses  Walpole  for  a  decisive  answer, 
and  finally  obtains  it  in  the  following  very  intel- 
ligible terms :  "  If  you  put  the  question  to  me 
as  a  minister,  I  must  and  can  answer  you  that 
the  money  shall  undoubtedly  be  paid,  as  soon 
as  suits  the  public  convenience ;  but  if  you  ask 
me  as  a  friend  whether  Dean  Berkeley  shall 
continue  in  America,  expecting  the  payment  of 
twenty  thousand  pounds,  I  advise  him  by  all 
means  to  return  to  Europe  and  give  up  his 
present  expectations." 

This  answer  Berkeley  regarded  as  decisive, 
and  in  the  autumn  of  1 73 1  he  sailed  for  London, 
having  spent  about  three  years  in  America. 


46  Ttishop  George  Berkeley. 

True  to  his  cause,  and  with  no  abatement  of 
love  or  zeal,  he  preaches,  soon  after  his  landing, 
the  annual  sermon  before  the  venerable  Society 
for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  in  which  he 
re-expresses  his  old  convictions  in  respect  to 
the  obligation  to  found  seminaries  of  Christian 
learning  in  the  colonies,  at  the  same  time  that 
he  manifests  .the  most  catholic  feeling  and  just 
appreciation  of  the  value  and  usefulness  of  the 
colleges  and  "religious  societies"  which  he  had 
found  in  America.  The  interest  already  felt  in 
Yale  College,  which  had  been  fostered  by  the 
magnanimous  devotion  of  Dr.  Johnson,  was 
again  manifested  by  the  conveyance  to  it  of  his 
estate  of  ninety-six  acres  in  Rhode  Island,  as  the 
foundation  of  the  Berkeley  scholarships.  If  we 
consider  the  circumstances  under  which  this  gift 
was  offered,  and  the  condition  of  the  college  at 
the  time  it  was  made,  it  was  one  of  the  most 
generous  gifts  which  it  ever  received.  If  we 
also  consider  the  man  by  whom  it  was  given 
and  the  circumstances  under  which  it  was 
offered,  it  is  one  of  the  most  worthy  to  be  com- 
memorated. The  income  of  this  estate  was  set 


"Bishop  George  Berkeley.  47 

apart  to  provide  three  Berkeley  scholarships  for 
the  promotion  of  classical  learning.*  These 
scholarships  have  been  proposed  every  year  till 
the  present,  although  the  income  which  they 
bring  of  fifty-five  dollars  a  year  is  not  very 
stimulating.  To  be  a  Berkeley  scholar  was 
formerly  a  distinguished  honor,  and  it  is  greatly 
to  be  regretted  that,  in  consequence  of  the  foun- 
dation of  more  lucrative  fellowships,  these  prizes 
are  now  not  more  earnestly  sought  for.  No 
more  desirable  gift  in  the  interests  of  classical 
learning,  in  Yale  College,  can  be  named,  than 
the  enlarged  endowment  of  these  three  scholar- 
ships into  classical  fellowships  worthy  of  the 
name  of  Berkeley.  In  the  year  1733  Berkeley 
made  another  princely  gift  to  the  library  from 
himself  and  his  friends  of  about  one  thousand 
volumes,  valued  at  four  hundred  pounds,  many 
of  which  still  remain  in  good  condition,  and 
stand  as  a  perpetual  memorial  of  the  munificent 
generosity  of  our  great  benefactor.  A  similar 
gift  was  also  sent  to  Harvard  College,  which 
was  unfortunately  destroyed  by  fire  in  1 764. 
*  See  Note  E. 


48  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

But  I  have  not  done  with  Berkeley's  life-  in 
America,  nor  with  the  fruits  which  it  bore.  The 
greatest  and  most  memorable  achievement  of 
his  residence  in  America  is  his  work  called 
"  Alciphron,  or  the  Minute  Philosopher."  This 
was  composed  at  Whitehall,  much  of  it  beneath 
the  well-known  Hanging  Rocks  near  his  own 
home,  and  contains  abundant  references  to  the 
scenery  by  which  he  was  surrounded  and  th6  life 
which  he  lived.  For  acuteness  of  logic,  for  con  - 
vincingness  of  argumentation,  for  felicity  of  illus- 
tration, for  elevation  of  sentiment,  and  for  mar- 
vellous clearness  and  purity  of  style,  this  work 
is  justly  distinguished  as  a  classical  treatise  in 
English  philosophical  literature.  It  is  not  ex- 
travagant to  say  that  it  is  the  best  reproduction 
of  the  Platonic  Dialogue  which  we  have  in  the 
English  language.  It  abounds  in  local  color  and 
allusions.  One  who  stands  on  Honeyman's  Hill 
and  turns  over  its  pages,  can  follow  with  his  eye 
the  several  features  of  the  landscape  which  the 
author  wrought  into  his  pictures  of  nature  and  of 
life.  Even  a  group  of  fox-hunters  rushes  across 
the  landscape  as  Berkeley  had  seen  them  many 


^Bishop  George  Berkeley.  49 

a  time  in  Narragansett.  One  almost  feels  the 
Newport  breezes  as  he  re-creates  the  visions 
which  the  author  depicts.  From  every  page  the 
reader  has  fresh  impressions  of  the  exhilarating 
yet  placid  life  which  this  saintly  enthusiast  was 
living  in  the  New  World,  while  he  was  waiting 
impatiently  to  labor  for  its  good.  It  is  of  lit- 
tle consequence  how  we  decide  the  question 
whether  this  treatise  should  be  classed  among 
the  products  of  English  or  American  literature, 
so  long  as  it  is  breezy  with  the  American  atmos- 
phere and  bright  with  American  life. 

The  theme,  however,  was  in  no  sense  Ameri- 
can. The  movement  which  it  described  and 
sought  to  resist  was  English,  as  the  writers  and 
thinkers  who  are  portrayed  and  criticized  are 
English  as  seen  at  a  distance  by  a  looker-on, 
through  the  loopholes  of  his  remote  retreat. 
Viewed  dogmatically,  it  was  a  portraiture  and 
criticism  of  the  negative  opinions  of  the  times. 
It  was  an  honest  attempt  to  arrest  the  tide  of 
atheistic  and  anti-Christian  opinion,  then  at  its 
flood,  which  had  been  flowing  for  a  half-century, 
and  which  ebbed  at  last  in  the  bloody  ooze  and 
8 


50  Ttisbop  George  Berkeley. 

foam  of  the  French  Revolution.  This  unbelief 
was  Protean  in  its  phases,  from  the  pot-house 
ribaldry  of  Mandeville  to  the  ambitious  Plato- 
nism  of  Shaftesbury,  from  the  daring  acuteness 
of  Collins  to  the  subtle  insinuations  of  Hume. 
Its  pervasive  energy  was  more  complete  over 
both  the  cultivated  and  the  common  mind  than 
ever  before  or  since.  The  contest  between  faith 
and  unbelief  was  severe,  and  the  issue  at  times 
seemed  doubtful.  Notwithstanding  the  solid 
and  varied  ability  of  the  learned  champions  of 
Theistic  and  Christian  Truth,  and  the  fiery  and 
fervent  zeal  of  the  Great  Evangelistic  Revival, 
which  arrested  its  course,  it  was  not  till  Europe 
had  seen  and  felt  the  judgments  of  God,  near 
the  close  of  the  last  century,  that  the  reaction 
was  complete  in  both  faith  and  morals,  in  lit- 
erature and  public  sentiment.  The  writings  on 
both  sides  of  this  controversy  are  a  library  them- 
selves, and  the  most  of  them  now  repose  in 
ponderous  dignity  upon  dusty  shelves ;  but 
among  them  there  are  two  of  conspicuous 
value,  and  these  are  the  "  Analogy "  of  Butler 
and  the  "Alciphron"  of  Berkeley,  the  one  of 


^Bishop  George  "Berkeley.  51 

which  was  published  in    1736,  and  the  other 
in   1732. 

The  value  of  Berkeley's  treatise  for  the  mod- 
ern reader  is  not  alone  or  chiefly  in  its  argu- 
ments, cogent  and  keenly  put  as  most  of  them 
are.  It  lies  rather  in  its  lifelike  and  piquant 
pictures  of  the  times,  and  the  keen  and  genial 
humor  with  which  the  author  disposes  of  the 
crowd  of  freethinkers  as  they  pass  in  review 
before  him,  holding  up  their  motley  creeds  and 
their  thin  and  shabby  philosophies  of  life.  As 
a  picture  of  the  times,  "Alciphron"  is  of  priceless 
and  permanent  value.  It  can  never  be  anti- 
quated so  long  as  philosophy  shall  renew  its 
foolish  and  never-ending  battle  with  personality 
in  man  and  in  God,  or  criticism  shall  back  its 
new  theories  with  the  old  assumption  that  there 
is  no  God  in  history,  or  that  He  cannot  break 
the  methods  of  nature  when  man  needs  to  be 
confronted  with  His  personal  presence.  The 
reader  of  "Alciphron"  will  find  that  Agnosti- 
cism is  no  novelty  as  a  philosophical  theory, 
although  in  Berkeley's  day  it  was  propounded 
on  the  one  hand  by  a  provost  and  a  bishop,  and 


52  "Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

on  the  other  by  troops  of  indolent  doubters, 
similarly  as  in  our  time  it  has  been  taught  by 
an  Oxford  divine  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the 
other  by  a  philosopher  who  claims  to  be  master 
in  every  line  of  thinking.  Dr.  Dwight  in  the 
year  1 803  procured  the  republication  of  this 
treatise  as  an  antidote  to  the  infidelity  of  his 
times.  It  was  printed  in  New  Haven,  and  stray 
copies  are  to  be  found  in  some  of  the  old  houses 
in  Connecticut.  I  ought  not  to  omit  to  mention 
that  the  work  first  appeared  in  England  in 
March,  1732,  two  months  after  Berkeley  arrived 
in  London,  and  that  it  passed  to  a  second  edi- 
tion the  same  year.  I  am  also  reminded  that 
I  ought  to  say  a  word  of  Berkeley  as  a 
writer  of  English  prose,  inasmuch  as  he  is,  per- 
haps, at  his  best  in  "Alciphron."  His  acquaint- 
ance with  Dean  Swift  in  Dublin  and  with 
Richard  Steele  in  London,  as  also  a  multitude 
of  incidents  besides,  show  very  clearly  that  he 
sympathized  warmly  with  the  critical  and  other 
influences  which  produced  the  English  style  of 
Queen  Anne.  Not  long  after  his  first  emer- 


V  is  bop  George  ^Berkeley.  53 

gence  in  London,  we  find  him  contributing  sev- 
eral papers,  fourteen  in  all,  to  the  Guardian, 
from  the  i4th  of  March  to  the  5th  of  August, 
several  of  which  are  quasi  satirical  and  argu- 
mentative against  the  freethinkers.  All  of  these 
are  marked  by  the  lively  combination  of  wit  and 
argument  which  distinguish  his  maturer  works. 
While  they  are  not  inferior  to  the  essays  by 
his  associates,  they  are  not  specially  distinguished 
by  the  simplicity,  smoothness,  and  freedom  on 
the  one  hand,  and  the  crispness,  brevity,  and 
personal  flavor  on  the  other,  which  distinguish 
his  more  elaborate  works.  Of  the  style  of  all 
these  writings,  hardly  any  praise  can  be  too  ex- 
travagant. The  wordiness  and  mannerism  which 
make  the  essays  of  Addison  to  drag  somewhat 
heavily  are  absent  from  all  the  disquisitions  of 
Berkeley ;  while  the  personality  of  the  author 
finds  full  and  forcible  expression  in  the  easy  use 
of  a  diction  which  fits  his  thoughts  like  a  well- 
made  garment.  Not  unfrequently  a  colloquial 
term  or  epithet  is  allowed,  but  never  with  any 
loss  of  dignity  or  sacrifice  of  strength ;  while 


54  'Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

good-natured  humor  gives  a  fresh  and  spicy 
flavor  to  the  strong  and  vigorous  thoughts  which 
are  never  wanting. 

Berkeley  had  returned  to  England  somewhat 
weakened  in  health  but  unbroken  in  spirits,  with 
his  energy  and  ardor  not  a  whit  abated.  He 
seems  to  have  lingered  awhile  among  his  many 
friends  in  and  about  London,  and  to  have  re- 
newed his  attendance  at  Court  and  his  philo- 
sophical interviews  with  the  metaphysical  Queen 
Caroline,  the  pupil  of  Leibnitz  and  the  patron 
of  Bishop  Butler.  He  must  have  had  some 
promise  of  preferment,  as  in  1 734  he  was  made 
Bishop  of  Cloyne,  in  Ireland,  a  diocese  not  far 
from  Cork.  He  settled  himself  at  once  in  this 
attractive  home,  and  devoted  all  his  energies  to 
his  official  duties  and  the  interests  of  the  peo- 
ple of  Ireland.  He  very  soon  published  the 
"  Analyst,"  which  occasioned  not  a  little  excite- 
ment among  the  mathematicians.  In  it  he 
resumed  a  line  of  argument  which  he  had  sug- 
gested years  before,  that  the  higher  mathematics 
employed  conceptions  which  involved  assump- 
tions which  as  truly  exclude  rational  definitions 


TSishop  George  Berkeley.  55 

as  do  any  of  the  mysteries  of  the  Christian 
faith.  This  was  followed  by  a  war  of  pam- 
phlets, and  excited  not  a  little  asperity  of  feeling. 
Some  years  after,  he  began  the  publication  of 
the  "  Querist,"  which  was  issued  in  three  parts, 
and  contained  in  all  about  six  hundred  brief  and 
telling  questions  respecting  the  disabilities  of 
Ireland,  many  of  which  involve  the  profound- 
est  principles  of  political  and  social  science. 
The  doughty  and  dogmatic  Warburton  writes  of 
it  in  1750  as  "well  worth  attending  to  by  the 
Irish  nation.  He  is  indeed  a  great  man,  and 
the  only  visionary  that  I  ever  knew  that  was." 
(Letters,  etc.)  Sir  James  Mackintosh  says: 
"Perhaps  the  'Querist*  contains  more  hints, 
then  original,  still  unapplied,  in  legislation  and 
political  economy,  than  are  to  be  found  in  any 
equal  space."  Many  of  these  hints  sparkle 
with  humor,  and  they  are  all  inspired  with 
humane  and  patriotic  feeling,  in  which  the 
ecclesiastic  and  the  humorist  are  lost  sight 
of  in  the  Christian  and  the  man.  Had  the 
half  of  these  suggestions  been  followed  at 
the  time  they  were  made,  the  subsequent 


56  Ttishop  George  Berkeley. 

history  of  Ireland,  and  of  England  in  its 
relations  to  Ireland,  would  have  been  in 
far  less  measure  a  history  of  tears  and  of 
blood. 

Berkeley  resided  in  Cloyne  about  eighteen 
years,  during  much  of  which  time  he  was  occu- 
pied with  a  singular  subject  of  practical  and 
speculative  interest.  This  was  none  other  than 
the  virtues  of  Tar-water  for  the  cure  of  a 
great  variety  of  bodily  diseases,  which  he  was 
led  oddly  enough  to  connect  with  the  highest 
themes  of  human  speculation.  As  the  result 
of  his  experiments  and  speculations,  he  pub- 
lished in  1744  an  essay  which  in  its  second 
edition  was  called  "  Siris,"  a  chain  of  philosophi- 
cal reflections  and  inquiries  concerning  the  vir- 
tues of  tar- water  and  divers  other  subjects  which 
he  contrived  to  connect  together  and  attach  to  his 
singular  theme.  This  book,  he  used  to  say,  cost 
him  more  thought  and  research  than  any  other 
of  his  life.  It  was  wittily  and  truly  said  of  it 
that  it  began  with  tar-water  and  ended  with  the 
Trinity.  Whatever  might  be  said  of  its  meta- 
physical value,  it  cannot  be  questioned  that  it 


Bishop  George  Berkeley.  57 

was  first  inspired  by  a  truly  humane  interest. 
Not  long  after  Berkeley's  removal  to  Cloyne, 
the  whole  country  was  desolated  by  famine  and 
epidemic  dysentery.  The  Bishop  remembered 
that,  when  in  Rhode  Island,  he  had  heard  of 
resin,  turpentine,  and  tar  as  favorite  remedies 
for  diseases  of  this  kind,  especially  with  the 
Indians,  and  had  been  induced  to  make  a  trial 
of  their  virtues.  He  found  the  remedy  so 
efficacious  that  he  recommended  it  in  letters  to 
his  friends,  and  then  more  publicly,  as  might  be 
expected.  It  was  not  long  before  he  found 
himself  the  champion  and  patron  of  the  remedy 
in  which  his  confidence  had  so  rapidly  increased. 
The  members  of  the  medical  profession  were 
irate  at  the  intermeddling  of  a  layman  in  mat- 
ters of  bodily  healing,  even  though  he  was  so 
revered  an  ecclesiastic  in  matters  spiritual ;  while 
the  Bishop's  zeal  and  pertinacity  were  enforced 
by  his  human  sympathy,  in  spite  of  the  opposi- 
tion and  ridicule  of  the  Faculty.  Manufactories 
of  tar- water  were  set  up  in  England  and  Amer- 
ica, and  "  Siris"  was  translated  into  several  of 
the  European  languages. 

9 


58  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

The  excitement  and  the  humor  of  the  situa- 
tion are  well  set  forth  in  the  following  lines  by 
the  Bishop : 

To  drink  or  not  to  drink,  that  is  the  doubt; 
With  pro  or  con  the  learned  would  make  it  out. 
Britons,  drink,  the  jolly  prelate  cries ; 
What  the  prelate  persuades,  the  doctor  denies. 
But  why  need  the  parties  so  learnedly  fight  ? 
A  choleric  Jurin  so  fiercely  indite  ? 
Since  our  senses  can  tell  if  this  liquor  be  right. 
What  agrees  with  his  stomach  and  what  with  his  head, 
The  drinker  may  feel  though  he  can't  write  or  read. 
Then  authority  is  nothing,  the  doctors  are  men, 
And  who  drinks  tar-water  will  drink  it  again. 

That  the  remedy  should  prove  so  popular  is 
not  surprising  to  one  who  remembers  that  vari- 
ous preparations  of  tar  are  still  sold  as  sov- 
ereign remedies  for  manifold  diseases.  I  do  not 
propose  to  trace  the  links  of  the  chain  by  which 
Berkeley  connects  the  resinous  element  in  tar 
with  the  highest  flights  of  human  speculation. 
To  do  so  would  require  an  analysis  of  the  chem- 
istry and  physiology  and  physics  of  Berkeley's 
time,  which  were  crude  enough  at  the  best.  The 


Bishop  George  Berkeley.  59 

logic  of  Berkeley's  attempt  may  remind  us  of 
sundry  speculations  in  our  own  times  in  respect 
to  ozone,  with  its  fancied  relations  to  resin  and 
tar  and  its  supposed  life-giving  and  life-renovat- 
ing qualities.  A  still  better  modern  instance  in 
the  opinion  of  some  might  be  furnished  by  the 
aspiring  speculations  by  which  such  a  thinker  as 
Professor  Clifford  found  mind-stuff  in  every 
earthy  substance  with  the  capacity  of  being 
transformed  into  spirit  under  the  requisite  scien- 
tific conditions,  or  in  the  confidence  with  which 
Professor  Huxley  makes  dead  matter  lift  itself  up 
into  living  protoplasm,  or  the  sanguine  Tyndall 
sees  visions  of  rudimentary  philosophers  floating 
in  fiery  clouds,  or  Herbert  Spencer  evolves  the 
universe  of  living  spirits  out  of  the  original 
fire-mist  by  the  impulse  acquired  in  its  first  rush 
"  from  a  rarer  to  a  denser  medium."  There  is 
this  difference  in  favor  of  Berkeley's  theory, 
that  the  Absolute  which  he  finds  or  assumes, 
when  he  is  reached,  is  intelligent,  personal,  and 
supreme.  The  new  metaphysics  of  materialistic 
evolution  has  provided  for  its  thinkers  a  ladder 
by  which  men  seem  to  ascend  to  the  loftiest 


60  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

heights  of  speculation  without  finding  either 
angels  or  God ;  and  for  this  reason,  if  for  no 
other,  it  is  hardly  fair  to  sneer  at  Bishop  Berke- 
ley for  seeking  to  trace  the  steps  by  which 
ancient  speculation  sought  to  ascend  upward 
to  the  ineffable  and  the  absolute,  and  to  con- 
nect matter  and  spirit  and  God  by  the  atten- 
uated links  of  the  subtle  chain  which  binds 
being  and  thought  together. 

John  Stuart  Mill  thinks  that  while  Siris  adds 
nothing  "of  the  smallest  value  to  Berkeley's 
thoughts  elsewhere  expressed,  it  overloads  them 
with  a  heap  of  useless  and  mostly  unintelligible 
jargon,  not  of  his  own,  but  of  the  Plotinists." 
Professor  Fraser,  his  eminent  biographer,  as  also 
his  zealous  critic  and  disciple,  finds  in  it  a  re- 
statement in  the  terms  of  the  ancient  schools 
of  his  original  idealism,  with  important  modifi- 
cations of  the  thoughts  which  in  his  earlier 
writings  are  so  sharply  cut  and  clearly  enounced. 

To  us  it  seems  to  be  rather  a  collection  of  the 
speculations  of  the  old  philosophers  and  the  cur- 
rent physicists  on  the  elements  and  products 


Bishop  George  Berkeley.  61 

which  make  up  the  universe  of  matter  and 
spirit; — and  these  rather  as  materials  for  medi- 
tation than  as  teaching,  or  even  suggesting  a 
completed  system.  It  is  the  work  of  a  philoso- 
pher, poet,  and  divine,  composed  as  he  might  be 
supposed  to  sit  in  his  well-furnished  library  while 
he  glances  at  the  titles  of  the  folios  that  stand 
upon  the  shelves,  till  he  finds  himself  thinking 
aloud  while  he  meditates  on  their  opinions  on  one 
subject  or  another,  after  the  subtle  logic  of  a 
memory  that  had  at  once  been  enriched  and 
stimulated  by  the  studies  of  half  a  century  ;  with 
his  hand  always  upon  Plato,  his  favorite  author, 
as  he  is  represented  in  his  portrait.  Doubtless, 
the  threads  of  connection  are  now  and  then 
peculiar  to  himself,  but  in  general  they  are  easy 
to  be  followed,  even  though  they  are  not  in  the 
line  of  the  severest  logic.  Many  of  these 
thoughts  are  profound  for  their  practical  wis- 
dom, and  breathe  the  spirit  of  noble  enthusiasm. 
There  are  not  a  few  passages  of  the  most  ele- 
vated sentiment,  expressed  in  language  which 
has  made  them  classical.  The  following  are 


or  THE 
UNIVERSITY 

OF 


62  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

not  infrequently  quoted  and  referred  to,  but  can 
never  be  pondered  too  seriously : 

"  Prevailing  studies  are  of  no  small  consequence  to 
a  state,  the  religion,  manners,  and  civil  government 
of  a  country,  ever  taking  some  bias  from  its  philosophy, 
which  affects  not  only  the  minds  of  its  professors  and 
students,  but  also  the  opinions  of  all  the  better  sort, 
and  the  practice  of  the  whole  people,  remotely  and 
consequently,  indeed,  though  not  inconsiderably. 
Have  not  the  polemic  and  scholastic  philosophy  been 
observed  to  produce  controversies  in  law  and  religion  ? 
And  have  not  fatalism  and  Sadducism  gained  ground, 
during  the  general  passion  for  the  Corpuscularian  and 
mechanical  philosophy,  which  hath  prevailed  for  about 
a  century.  *  *  *  Certainly  had  the  philosophy 
of  Socrates  and  Pythagoras  prevailed  in  this  age, 
among  those  who  think  themselves  too  wise  to  receive 
the  dictates  of  the  Gospel,  we  should  not  have  seen 
interest  take  so  fast  hold  on  the  minds  of  men,  nor 
public  spirit  to  be  fsvvatav  eorjOeiav  a  generous  folly, 
among  those  who  are  reckoned  to  be  the  most  knowing 
as  well  as  the  most  getting  part  of  mankind. 

"  It  might  well  be  thought  serious  trifling  to  tell  my 
readers  that  the  greatest  men  had  ever  a  high  esteem 
for  Plato,  whose  writings  are  the  touchstone  of  a  hasty 
and  shallow  mind;  whose  philosophy  has  been  the 


Bishop  George  Berkeley.  63 

admiration  of  ages;  which  supplied  patriots,  magis- 
trates, and  law-givers  to  the  most  flourishing  states, 
as  well  as  fathers  to  the  church  and  doctors  to  the 
schools.  Albeit,  in  these  days  the  depths  of  that  old 
learning  are  rarely  fathomed  ;  and  yet  it  were  happy  for 
these  lands  if  our  young  nobility  and  gentry,  instead 
of  modern  maxims,  would  imbibe  the  notions  of  the 
great  men  of  antiquity.  But  in  these  freethinking 
times,  many  an  empty  head  is  shook  at  Aristotle  and 
Plato  as  well  as  at  the  Holy  Scriptures."  (331.) 

What  can  be  finer  than  the  conclusion : 
"  The  eye  by  long  use  comes  to  see  even  in  the 
darkest  cavern  !  and  there  is  no  subject  so  obscure  but 
we  may  discern  some  glimpse  of  truth  by  long  poring 
on  it.  Truth  is  the  cry  of  all,  but  the  game  of  a 
few.  *  *  *  He  that  would  make  a  real  progress  in 
knowledge  must  dedicate  his  age  as  well  as  his  youth, 
the  later  growth  as  well  as  first  fruits,  at  the  altar  of 
Truth."  (368.) 

The  domestic  life  of  Berkeley  at  Whitehall 
and  at  Cloyne  was  eminently  elevated  and 
lovely.  He  cherished  the  acts  and  amenities  of 
culture,  with  ardent  and  sustained  enthusiasm. 
Music,  drawing,  and  painting  were  followed  by 
many  if  not  all  of  his  household.  A  contempo- 


64  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

rary  thus  describes  his  home  :  "  He  has  suc- 
cessfully transplanted  the  polite  arts,  which 
before  flourished  in  a  warmer  soil,  to  this  north- 
ern climate.  Painting  and  music  are  no  longer 
strangers  in  Ireland,  or  confined  to  Italy.  In 
the  Episcopal  palace  of  Cloyne,  the  eye  is  en- 
tertained with  a  great  variety  of  good  paintings, 
as  well  as  the  ear  with  concerts  of  excellent 
music.  There  are  here  some  pieces  of  the  best 
masters,  as  a  Magdalen  of  Rubens,  some  heads 
by  Van  Dyke  and  Kneller,  besides  several 
good  paintings  performed  in  the  house,  etc." 
He  writes  himself:  "  Your  care  in  providing  the 
Italian  psalms  set  to  music,  the  four-stringed 
bass  violin,  and  the  antique  bass  viol,  requires 
our  repeated  thanks.  We  have  already  a  bass 
viol  made  in  Southwark  1730,  and  reputed 
the  best  in  England,  and  through  your  means 
we  are  possessed  of  the  best  in  France."  His 
paternal  love  and  tenderness  are  conspicuous  in 
all  his  letters.  Of  his  daughter  he  writes : 
"  Bu^such  a  daughter  !  so  bright  a  little  gem  ; 
that  to  prevent  her  doing  mischief  among  the 
illiterate  squires  I  am  resolved  to  treat  her  like 


Ttishop  George  Berkeley.  65 

a  boy  and  make  her  study  eight  hours  a  day." 
Of  his  favorite  son  who  died :  "  I  was  a  man 
relieved  from  the  amusement  of  politics,  visits, 
and  what  the  world  calls  pleasure.  I  had  a 
little  friend  educated  always  under  my  own 
eye,  whose  painting  delighted  me,  whose  music 
ravished  me,  and  whose  lively,  gay  spirit  was  a 
continual  feast.  It  has  pleased  God  to  take  him 
hence.  God,  I  say,  in  His  mercy  hath  deprived 
me  of  this  pretty,  gay  plaything.  His  parts 
and  person,  his  innocence  and  purity,  his  par- 
ticular uncommon  affection  for  me,  had  gained 
too  much  upon  me.  Not  content  to  be  fond  of 
him,  I  became  vain  of  him.  I  had  my  heart  too 
much  upon  him,  more  perhaps  than  I  ought  to 
have  done  upon  anything  in  this  world."  His 
wife  was  a  person  of  attractive  manners  and 
many  accomplishments,  but  especially  distin- 
guished for  her  saintly  and  so-called  pietistic 
temper.  An  effective  and  brilliant  portrait  of 
her  husband  from  her  hands  is  at  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Dublin. 

It  is  pleasant  to  know  that  during  the  twenty 
years  or  more  of  Berkeley's  life  after  leaving 
10 


66  Bishop  George  Berkeley. 

America,  he  maintained  an  intimate  friendly  in- 
tercourse with  the  Johnson  family,  and  that  he 
expressed  his  continued  gratification  at  the  pros- 
perity of  this  college  till  the  end  of  his  life,  as 
also  at  the  spirit  in  which  his  benefaction  was 
regarded  and  administered.  In  1745  he  gave 
some  excellent  suggestions  to  Dr.  Johnson  re- 
specting the  foundation  of  King's,  since  Colum- 
bia, College,  of  which  the  Doctor  was  the  first 
president,  and  uniformly  expressed  entire  satis- 
faction in  the  results  of  his  own  efforts  to  pro- 
mote Christian  education  in  this  country. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  it  accorded  with 
his  tastes,  and  was  a  feature  of  his  plan  to  pro- 
vide in  his  college  not  only  appliances  for  in- 
struction in  the  classics,  mathematics,  and  the- 
ology, but  also  for  culture  in  the  fine  arts, 
especially  in  music,  drawing,  painting,  and 
architecture.  He  brought  with  him,  as  his  pro- 
fessor of  drawing,  painting,  and  architecture, 
John  Smybert,  then  a  painter  in  London  who  had 
made  good  studies  in  Italy.  Before  the  scheme 
of  the  college  was  abandoned,  Smybert  estab- 
lished himself  in  Boston,  where  he  was  the  first 


Tttsbop  George  Berkeley.  67 

portrait  painter  of  any  reputation  which  Boston 
had  known. 

We  have  already  noted  that  as  an  architect 
Smybert  furnished  the  designs  for  the  old  State 
House  in  that  city,  which  is  still  carefully  pre- 
served. Peter  Harrison  was  an  architect  by 
profession,  a  pupil  of  Sir  John  Van  Brugh, 
who,  after  a  sojourn  in  England,  returned  to 
Boston  for  the  remainder  of  his  life.  He  gave 
the  designs  for  the  present  King's  Chapel  in 
1749,  which  alone  should  invest  his  name  and 
memory  with  respect. 

With  his  two  other  companions  Berkeley 
maintained  an  intimate  and  unbroken  friendship 
till  the  end  of  his  own  life.  Mr.  Dalton  sur- 
vived him.  Mr.,  afterwards  Sir,  John  James 
became  a  member  of  the  Roman  Catholic  com- 
munion in  1741,  not  long  before  his  death.  His 
intention  to  do  this  called  forth  a  long  letter  from 
Berkeley,  in  which  his  conceptions  of  the  Chris- 
tian life  and  the  evidences  of  the  Christian  sys- 
tem are  set  forth  at  great  length  and  with  a 
delightful  catholicity  of  spirit  towards  all  Chris- 
tian believers.  It  is  interesting  to  know  that 


68  Ttisbop  George  Berkeley. 

Sir  John  had  announced  his  intention  to  give 
the  Bishop  the  bulk  of  his  large  fortune,  but 
was  dissuaded  by  what  is  called  a  "  thunder- 
ing letter"  from  Berkeley  to  Dalton,  saying: 
"Do  you  tell  James  that  I  will  not  have  his 
fortune." 

In  1752  Berkeley  carried  into  effect  a  plan 
which  he  long  had  in  mind,  viz.,  to  resign 
his  Episcopate,  that  he  might  superintend  the 
education  of  his  second  surviving  son  and 
enjoy  complete  retirement  from  active  service. 
His  petition  to  be  allowed  to  resign  was  pre- 
sented to  the  King,  who  replied  that  "  he  should 
die  as  bishop,  but  might  live  where  he  pleased." 
Accordingly,  he  went  to  Oxford  to  live  a  retired 
life,  but  survived  only  a  few  months.  On  the 
evening  of  the  i4thof  January,  1753,  while  his 
wife  was  reading  from  the  fifteenth  chapter  of 
the  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians,  his  daughter 
turned  to  offer  him  a  cup  of  tea,  and  found  that 
he  was  gone  from  the  earth. 

There  could  scarcely  be  a  more  fitting  death 
after  a  life  of  such  eminent  usefulness.  A  man 
so  conspicuously  unworldly,  so  acute  in  intellect, 


Bishop  George  Berkeley.  69 

accomplished  in  culture,  unselfish  in  spirit,  joyous 
in  his  sympathy  with  art  and  science  and  learn- 
ing, buoyant  in  spirit  and  serene  in  his  Christian 
hopes,  was  fitly  dismissed  from  the  earth  by 
an  Ethanasian  such  as  this. 

Here  ends  my  simple  and  I  fear  somewhat 
tedious  narrative.  It  speaks  for  itself,  and  I  trust 
will  furnish  all  the  apology  which  I  need  to  make 
for  attempting  to  commemorate  the  two-hun- 
dredth birthday  of  one  whose  connection  with 
Yale  College  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
events  in  its  annals.  My  esteemed  predecessor, 
Rector  Williams,  in  a  letter  of  thanks  to  Berkeley, 
expresses  the  conviction  that  the  college  will  be 
moved  by  a  sense  of  gratitude  to  "  always  retain 
a  favorable  opinion  of  his  idea  of  material  sub- 
stance as  consisting  in  a  stated  union  and  com- 
bination of  sensible  ideas."  No  student  of  logic 
or  philosophy  will,  it  is  hoped,  be  so  obtuse  as 
not  to  appreciate  the  sharp  analysis  and  com- 
pact logic  which  led  Berkeley  to  his  idealism, 
or  to  esteem  the  work  of  criticism  and  reply  to 
be  easy.  But  whatever  may  be  thought  of  his 
philosophy,  we  are  confident  that  no  man  who 


70  Tlisbop  George  Berkeley. 

becomes  familiar  with  his  character  and  follows 
his  career  can  withhold  from  him  the  tribute  of 
affectionate  admiration. 

In  the  chapel  of  our  daily  worship  two  win- 
dows always  meet  the  eyes  of  the  congrega- 
tion—  one  honored  with  the  name  of  Jonathan 
Edwards  and  the  other  with  that  of  George 
Berkeley.  Each  was  distinguished  for  acuteness 
of  intellect,  for  vigor  of  logic,  for  Christian 
and  missionary  "self-devotion,  and  for  an  ardent 
interest  in  Christian  education.  May  these 
names  ever  be  honored  and  the  men  who  bore 
them ;  and  as  Yale  College  becomes  more  em- 
phatically and  conspicuously  than  now  the  home 
of  Christian  science  and  of  Christian  letters, 
may  these  names  glow  with  a  still  brighter 
lustre  in  its  annals. 


APPENDIX. 


NOTE  A. — It  is  worthy  of  notice  that  only  a  few  years 
afterwards,  surrounded,  as  it  were,  by  similar  logical  and  spirit- 
ual impulses,  Jonathan  Edwards  drew  the  same  conclusions 
as  Berkeley  had  done  from  the  same  data  in  Locke's  Essay, 
which  he  studied  in  Yale  College  at  the  age  of  14.  Among 
his  "  Notes  on  the  Mind  "  *  there  is  to  be  found  a  complete 
and  consistent  system  of  idealism  which  is  almost  identical 
with  Berkeley's.  It  has  been  conjectured  that  possibly  at 
the  time  when  these  notes  were  written,  between  1717  and 
1719,  Edwards  may  have  seen  a  copy  of  one  of  Berkeley's 
earlier  treatises,  published  from  seven  to  nine  years  before ; 
perhaps  through  the  agency  of  Dr.  Johnson,  who  was  tutor 
in  the  college  at  that  time.  There  is  no  evidence  that  a 
copy  of  any  of  the  works  referred  to  was  known  at  the  col- 
lege, and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  they  were  not  then 
accessible.  Indeed,  Dr.  Johnson  is  said  to  have  first  become 
interested  in  Berkeley's  idealism  when  he  went  to  England 
in  1723  for  Episcopal  ordination.  Edwards  makes  no  refer- 
ence to  Berkeley,  nor  does  he  intimate  that  any  writer  had 
suggested  the  argument  for  idealism  to  his  mind.  The  state- 

*  See  Works  of  President  Edwards.  New-York,  1830.  Vol.  I., 
Note  H.,  p.  664. 


72  Appendix. 

ments  and  reasonings  are  all  apparently  the  honest  and 
independent  conclusions  of  his  surpassingly  clear  and  logical 
understanding.  These  notes,  though  the  work  of  Edwards's 
youth  between  the  ages  of  14  and  18,  it  should  be  remem- 
bered were  first  printed  in  the  year  1830. 

In  his  treatise  on  Original  Sin,  Edwards  employs  phrase- 
ology that  was  distinctively  Berkeleian,  and  uses  language 
which  indicates,  without  naming  Berkeley,  that  he  has  him 
distinctly  in  mind.  Some  other  New  England  theologians 
have  employed  definitions  and  processes  of  reasoning  in 
which  the  idealism  of  Berkeley  may  be  distinctly  traced,  if 
it  is  not  distinctly  confessed.  To  these  they  were  doubtless 
impelled  by  the  tendency  of  the  Calvinistic  theology  to  ex- 
alt the  Deity  in  every  relation  which  he  can  hold  to  man  or 
the  universe. 

NOTE  B. — The  attention  of  most  of  the  students  and  critics 
of  modern  speculation  has  more  generally  been  limited  to  the 
idealism  of  Berkeley  as  the  distinctive  and  salient  feature  of 
his  teaching,  which  aroused  the  attention  of  his  critics  in  un- 
wearied efforts  for  its  refutation ;  and  in  that  way  stimulated 
philosophic  inquiry,  and  brought  into  existence  comments, 
criticisms,  and  emendations  without  number,  in  all  the  Pro- 
tean forms  of  modern  speculation.  Thus  it  is  conceived  that 
Hume  followed  Berkeley  only  with  a  wider  and  more  con- 
sistent application  of  his  critical  questioning,  simply  by  a 
stricter  and  more  rigorous  adherence  to  his  method;  that 
Stewart  and  Hamilton  were  aroused  to  protest  against  the 
premises  and  method  of  both  by  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  ; 
while  Kant,  with  a  more  searching  analysis,  tore  away  the 
imperfect  foundations  on  which  all  had  builded,  and  sup- 
plied their  plaqe  with  a  structure  of  his  own,  which  his  suc- 
cessors in  their  turn  have  sought  to  destroy  and  replace. 


Appendix.  73 

The  sole  service  that  Berkeley  is  supposed  to  have  rendered 
was  to  demonstrate  the  weakness  of  Locke's  "  Analysis  "  by  a 
consistent  application  of  some  of  his  definitions,  and  a  some- 
what narrow  and  over-rigorous  interpretation  of  his  theory 
of  the  origin  and  nature  of  knowledge.  Hence  Locke, 
Berkeley,  and  Hume  are  more  commonly  grouped  together 
as  the  consistent  disciples  of  the  same  school, —  with  which 
the  Scottish  philosophers  are  supposed  to  have  a  very  close 
connection,  and  against  which  the  German  school  was 
aroused  to  an  effective  protest.  The  single  peculiarity  by 
which  Berkeley  is  distinguished  in  the  view  of  such  critics 
is  by  his  persistent  idealism,  *'.  <?.,  his  denial  of  the  reality 
of  matter,  which  is  regarded  as  somewhat  less  consistent  and 
rigorous  than  Hume's  denial  of  spirit ;  while  both  are  held 
to  be  desperate  Nihilists  in  respect  to  everything  besides, 
that  philosophy  cares  or  contends  for. 

A  close  scrutiny  of  his  system  will  reveal  the  truth,  that 
Berkeley  confined  his  negative  or  skeptical  position  to  the 
denial  of  matter  as  an  obscure,  unknown  something  over 
and  beyond  the  ideas  occasioned  or  produced  in  the  human 
mind ;  while  in  respect  to  every  other  important  position  he 
was  far  in  advance  of  his  time,  and  anticipated  many  of  the 
questions  with  which  modern  speculation  has  been  forced  to 
concern  itself,  and  most  of  the  conclusions  which  the  soundest 
philosophy  accepts.  As  an  idealist,  he  denied  the  metaphysi- 
cal necessity  of  matter ;  but  by  the  same  necessity  he  affirmed 
the  reality  of  spirit,  not  only  as  the  agent  or  subject  of  the 
act  of  knowledge,  but  as  the  object  of  the  same  in  the  form 
of  ideas.  Spiritual  being  he  held  to  be  directly  known  as  the 
conscious  ego  which  is  the  agent  of  knowledge;  as  the  free 
and  responsible  ego  which  is  moral ;  and  as  the  Eternal  spirit 
who  wakens  in  dependent  spirits  those  ideas  of  which  the 
senses  are  capable,  and  binds  them  together  in  those  relation- 

II 


74  Appendix. 

ships  which  make  memory,  experience,  and  science  possible. 
Berkeley  was  eminently  a  Theistic  idealist,  affirming  the. 
necessary  and  self-evident  existence  of  the  absolute  Spirit  as 
the  permanent  sustainer  of  those  ideas  which  alternately  wake 
and  sleep,  die  and  live  again,  in  the  subjective  experiences  of 
those  dependent  spirits  that  have  their  being  in  Him.  What 
was  still  more  important  in  a  philosophic  sense,  he  affirmed 
the  original  capacity  in  the  human  spirit  to  discern  and  trust 
in  the  relations  of  id(  as  by  direct  intuition;  which  relations 
are  the  laws  of  God's  actings  in  the  objective  universe  of 
ideas,  and  the  conditions  of  man's  subjective  interpretation 
of  the  same.  In  a  word,  his  system  provided  for  God,  for 
created  and  dependent  spirits,  and  for  the  permanent  mani- 
festation of  God  in  ideas,  connected  by  permanent  relation- 
ships, which  are  interpretable  by  man,  and  thus  form  the 
materials  for  Science  and  Religion,  and  the  media  for  a 
constant  communication  between  God  and  man.* 

It  is  true  all  these  points  of  his  system  were  not  in  his  life- 
time fully  expanded  or  formally  defended,  for  the  reason  that 
they  were  not  fully  appreciated  by  current  criticism  — neither 
as  to  what  they  displaced  nor  as  to  what  they  supplied.  This  is 
explained  in  great  part  by  the  circumstance  that  Locke  had 
completely  taken  possession  of  the  thinking  of  his  times, 
and  been  accepted  in  the  general  judgment  as  having  started 
all  the  problems  and  answered  all  the  questions  which  could 
possibly  be  asked  or  thought  of.  The  more  conspicuous 
was  this  sagacity  of  Berkeley  for  this  very  reason,  and  the 
higher  his  claim  to  the  eminence  which  is  his  rightful  due. 
We  venture  the  opinion  that,  as  Berkeley  becomes  a  second 
time  the  object  of  critical  attention  in  the  light  of  modern 
research,  his  reach  of  thought  and.  his  comprehensive  sagacity 

*  Cf.  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,  89. 


Appendix.  75 

will  be  more  and  more  highly  appreciated,  and  his  name  will 
rank  higher  in  the  estimation  of  philosophical  critics  and 
historians.  It  will  be  seen  more  and  more  clearly  and  be 
acknowledged  more  generally  that  he  not  only  rendered  an 
important  service  in  his  time  by  his  earnest  protest  against 
serious  oversights  in  current  speculation,  but  that  his  direct 
contributions  to  the  principles  which  philosophy  must  hold 
as  fundamental  were  by  no  means  inconsiderable.  Most  of 
these  positions  are  announced  rather  than  expanded ;  they 
are  proposed  rather  than  defended.  Their  varied  and  mani- 
fold applications,  and  their  indispensable  necessity  to  the  in- 
terests of  science  and  of  faith,  had  not  been  brought  to  light 
by  Kant's  critical  analysis.  Notwithstanding  all  this,  or 
rather  on  account  of  all  this,  the  greater  is  the  sagacity 
which  provided  so  solid  a  foundation  for  the  most  important 
beliefs  of  man.  The  subjective  Idealism  of  Berkeley  it 
may  be  easy  for  us  to  refute  and  explain.  Possibly  we  may 
find  in  it  a  proof  of  enthusiastic  weakness  and  youthful  im- 
petuosity. But  his  objective  spiritualism  can  never  be  set 
aside,  while  the  Theism  with  which  he  supplemented  science 
makes  itself  more  and  more  manifest  as  a  scientific  necessity 
in  the  confessed  judgment  of  an  increasing  number  of  the 
profoundest  thinkers.  The  positiveness  and  naivete*  with 
which  Berkeley  assumes  the  existence  of  God,  as  an  axiom 
in  philosophy,  may  be  a  scandal  to  many  speculative  thinkers ; 
but  the  history  of  speculation,  especially  in  more  recent 
times,  must  demonstrate  to  a  greater  number  the  conclusion 
that  scientific  Theism  is  a  philosophical  necessity. 

At  the  first  thought,  it  seems  altogether  incongruous  and 
unseemly  to  connect  Kant  or  his  speculations  with  Berke- 
ley and  his  philosophy, —  the  one  is  so  breezy  and  sunny, 
the  other  so  sombre  and  cloudy ;  the  one  is  so  open  and 
direct,  the  other  is  so  evasive  and  remote;  and  yet  the  two 


76  Appendix. 

are  more  nearly  connected  than  at  first  sight  would  seem  to 
be  possible,  not  merely  by  their  historic  connection  through 
Hume  under  the  law  of  action  and  reaction,  but  by  the 
problems  with  which  both  grappled  so  earnestly,  although 
their  solutions  sometimes  vary  so  widely.  We  find  them  in 
certain  particulars  nearer  to  one  another  than  we  should  at  first 
have  suspected.  The  matter  which  Berkeley  so  passionately 
rejects  while  he  retains  the  sensations  which  are  all  we 
know,  is,  as  he  conceives  it,  not  greatly  unlike  the  Ding  an 
sich  which  Kant  so  pertinaciously  ignores,  while  he  accepts 
the  phenomena,  which  somehow  he  holds  to  be  its  repre- 
sentative. The  time  and  space  which  Kant  acknowledges 
as  the  forms  and  only  as  the  forms  of  our  direct  knowledge — 
affirmed  or  presumed — of  sense  experiences  by  an  a  priori 
necessity,  are  accepted  by  Berkeley  as  a  priori  relations, 
because  necessarily  involved  in  the  continued  activity  of  God. 
Kant's  categories  of  our  generalized  thinking  are  matched 
by  Berkeley's  original  notions  of  relations  between  the 
ideas  which  are  discerned  and  affirmed  directly  by  the  mind. 
The  ideas,  however,  which  Kant  beheld  as  shivering  ghosts 
through  the  mists  of  his  timid  skepticism  and  which  he  was 
forced  to  recognize  as  real  by  a  faith  which  he  could  only  say 
was  a  make-believe, —  of  God,  the  soul,  and  the  cosmos, — 
these  were  to  Berkeley  the  pillars  and  foundation  of  his  philo- 
sophic faith.  While  Kant  finds  in  conscience  the  command 
to  believe  in  God,  because  God  is  needed  as  a  chief  of 
police  for  the  moral  universe,  Berkeley  finds  in  God  the 
personal  foundation  and  enforcer  of  duty,  because  duty  is 
the  voice  of  the  reason  and  goodness,  which  are  but  other 
names  for  the  thoughts  and  actings  of  God. 

While  we  may  not  say  of  the  system  of  Berkeley  that  it 
answers  all  the  questions  which  philosophy  bids  us  ask,  we 
can  say  that  its  answers,  so  far  as  they  are  given,  are  clear, 


Appendix.  77 

coherent,  comprehensive,  and  inspiring,  while  Kant  perpet- 
ually tantalizes  us  with  solutions  which  we  do  not  always 
understand  and  cannot  always  accept.  It  is  gratifying  to 
find  evidence  that  the  fashion  of  philosophizing  which  was 
set  so  positively  by  Kant,  gives  signs  of  having  worn  itself 
out,  and  that  a  new  fashion,  which  is  nearer  to  nature  and 
sanctioned  by  common  sense,  is  beginning  to  find  currency 
even  in  Germany,  after  which  the  true  Absolute  is  more  and 
more  distinctly  recognized  as  a  personal  intelligence,  the 
necessary  relations  of  whose  self-existence  are  at  once  the 
objects  and  the  elements  of  a  solid  philosophy. 

NOTE  C. —  Nothing  is  more  interesting  in  modern  philos- 
ophy than  the  admiration  of  John  Stuart  Mill  for  Berkeley  as 
a  philosopher ;  while  nothing  is  more  amusing  than  the  par- 
tial and  even  materialistic  applications  which  he  makes  of 
Berkeley's  idealistic  theory.  Mill's  estimate  of  Berkeley  as  a 
philosopher  is  found  in  one  of  the  last  essays  *  which  came 
from  his  pen.  He  says:  "  We  think  it  will  be  recognized  that 
of  all  who,  from  the  earliest  times,  have  applied  the  powers 
of  their  minds  to  metaphysical  inquiries,  he  is  the  one  of 
greatest  philosophic  genius ;  though  among  them  are  included 
Plato,  Hobbes,  Locke,  Hartley,  and  Hume;  Descartes, 
Spinoza,  Leibnitz,  and  Kant."  In  proof  of  his  eminent 
genius,  he  finds  "  three  first-rate  philosophical  discoveries ;  " 
"  the  doctrine  of  the  acquired  perceptions  of  sight;  "  "  the 
non-existence  of  abstract  ideas ; "  and  "  the  true  nature  of  the 
externality  which  we  attribute  to  the  objects  of  our  senses." 
It  is  as  a  representative  and  champion  of  Berkeley,  in  the  mu- 
tilated form  in  which  his  doctrines  were  modified  by  Hume, 


*  Berkeley's  Life  and  Writings.     Three  Essays  on  Religion :    Henry 
Holt  &  Co.,  1874. 


78  Appendix. 

that  he  criticizes  the  philosophy  of  Sir  William  Hamilton, 
confronting  his  realism  with  what  he  calls  "  the  psychological 
theory,"  /'.  ^.,  the  theory  that  resolves  the  material  world  into 
combinations  of  ideas,  after  the  relations  of  succession  and 
simultaneity  which  tend  to  recall  one  another  under  the  law 
of  association,  and  are  finally  united  into  enduring  com- 
plexes, giving  the  definition  of  matter  as  "  a  permanent 
possibility  of  sensations."  "  This  conception  of  matter,"  he 
contends,  "  includes  the  whole  meaning  attached  to  it  by  the 
common  world,  apart  from  philosophical  and  sometimes 
from  theological  theories."*  This  phrase, "  the  permanent 
possibility  of  sensations,"  in  the  creed  of  Mill,  covers  and 
expresses  all  the  meaning  which  we  attach  to  matter  as  the 
cause  of  our  sensations.  Our  confident  "  expectation,"  that 
one  sensation  will  be  followed  by  another,  expresses  all  that 
we  understand  or  intend  by  the  proposition  that  one  event 
is  caused  by  another ;  while  the  expectation  itself  is  "  the 
product  of  associations,  so  often  conjoined  as  to  have  become 
inseparably  united."  Mill  agrees  with  Berkeley  so  far  as  to 
resolve  matter  as  an  object  entirely  into  sensations,  i.  <?., 
ideas,  but  he  fails  to  agree  with  him  in  the  judgment  that  as 
such  a  combination,  it  is  produced  by  the  Creative  mind. 
In  other  words,  he  has  substituted  Hume's  doctrine  for  that 
of  Berkeley  in  these  two  particulars  :  first,  he  dispenses  with 
the  creative  mind  as  the  objective  producer  of  sensations, 
and,  second,  he  substitutes  inseparable  associations  with  the 
expectations  which  they  engender  for  causative  relations, 
both  objective  and  subjective. 

In  his  denial  of  spirit,  creative  and  human,  Mill  follows 
Hume  closely  and  extravagantly,  except  that  he  substitutes 
feelings  as  psychological  in  contrast  with  sensations  as  cor- 

*  Examination  of  Sir  William  Hamilton's  Philosophy,  etc.,  Chap.  XI. 


Appendix.  79 

poreal,  whatever  this  contrast  may  signify  in  his  analysis. 
Not  content  with  the  denial  of  the  Ego, — in  this  sharply  con- 
trasting with  Berkeley, —  he  follows  the  steps  made  necessary 
by  his  own  analysis,  even  to  the  resolution  of  the  Ego  into 
"  a  permanent  possibility  of  feeling  which  forms  the  notion 
of  myself."  "  The  mind  is  but  a  series  of  feelings,"  "  or 
thread  of  consciousness,"  "  supplemented  by  believed  possi- 
bilities of  consciousness,"  all  of  which  is  crowned  by  the 
paradox  which  Hume  never  would  have  ventured  to  assert, 
viz. :  that  the  mind  is  only  "  a  series  of  feelings,  which  is 
aware  of  itself  as  past  and  future,"  although  he  confesses  in 
the  same  breath  that  this  brings  us  into  contact  with  that 
"  final  inexplicability  "  which  "  belongs  to  ultimate  facts."  * 

The  discerning  critic  will  not  need  also  to  be  told  that, 
with  all  the  admiration  which  Mill  expresses  for  Berkeley,  he 
rejects  the  most  important  features  of  his  system,  viz. :  God, 
as  the  originator  and  sustainer  of  the  ideas  which  we  call 
material,  created  spirits  as  the  receivers  of  the  same,  and  the 
relations  bet  ween  the  ideas  by  which  we  rise  to  science.  Where- 
as Berkeley  makes  God  to  be  known  directly  by  the  mind  as  the 
axiom  and  corner-stone  of  all  other  knowledge,  Mill  repre- 
sents Berkeley  as  giving  us  a  doubtful  argument  for  his  being 
derived  from  and  founded  on  his  works.  Instead  of  the  Ego, 
of  which  Berkeley  insists  that  we  are  directly  conscious,  Mill 
gives  us  a  thread  of  consciousness  or  a  permanent  possibility 
of  feeling.  Berkeley  holds  that  our  sensations  as  ideas  of  the 
Divine  mind  are  perpetually  renewed  by  divine  agency  in  the 
minds  of  men.  Instead  of  the  more  or  less  permanent  asso- 
ciations of  the  same,  by  bonds  of  coexistence,  succession,  and 
similitude,  which  Mill  is  compelled  incidentally  to  recognize 


*  Cf.   Review  of  Hamilton,  Chap.  XII.     Cf.  also  James  Mill,  Analy- 
sis of  the  Human  Mind,  2d  edition,  Chapters  V.  and  X.,  with  notes. 


8o  Appendix. 

without  finding  a  place  for  them  in  his  theory,  Berkeley  endows 
man  with  the  original  capacity  to  recognize  these  relations  as 
elementary  and  original  constituents  of  knowledge.  In  Berke- 
ley's own  language, "  Thing  or  Being  is  the  most  general  name 
of  all ;  it  comprehends  under  it  two  kinds,  entirely  distinct 
and  heterogeneous,  and  which  have  nothing  common  but  the 
name,  viz. :  Spirits  and  ideas.  *  *  *  We  comprehend  our  own 
existence  by  inward  feeling  or  reflection,  and  that  of  other 
spirits  by  reason.  *  *  *  In  like  manner,  we  know  and 
have  a  notion  of  relations  between  things  or  ideas ;  which 
relations  are  distinct  from  the  ideas  or  things  related,  inas- 
much as  the  latter  may  be  perceived  by  us  without  our  per- 
ceiving the  former.  To  me  it  seems  that  ideas,  spirits,  and 
relations  are  all  in  their  respective  kinds  the  object  of  human 
knowledge  and  subject  to  discourse,  and  that  the  term  idea 
would  be  improperly  extended  to  signify  everything  we 
know  or  have  a  notion  of." — Principles,  §§  89,  90. 

All  this  Mill  overlooks,  accepting  only  sensations,  and 
half  accepting  their  relations,  but  finding  no  place  for  either 
the  human  or  divine  spirit,  as  an  original  agent  or  ground 
of  knowledge. 

The  almost  contemptuous  tone  in  which  Mill  speaks  of 
what  he  calls  "  Berkeley's  argument  for  the  existence  of 
God,"  as  presented  in  Alciphron,  displays  a.  singular  misap- 
prehension of  the  place  which  the  Supreme  holds  in  Berke- 
ley's theory,  and  of  the  evidence  which  Mill  requires,  and 
which  Berkeley  never  presumes  to  furnish  of  this  fundamen- 
tal element  even  of  such  knowledge.  That  Mill  should  call 
this  presentation  of  this  great  truth  an  argument  would 
seem  to  indicate  that  he  failed  to  appreciate  its  place  in 
Berkeley's  theory  of  knowledge,  and  his  conception  of  the 
essential  ground  for  the  inductions  of  practical  wisdom  and 
of  instructed  science. 


Appendix.  81 

The  contemptuous  disposition  which  Mill  makes  of  the 
interpretations  given  in  Sins  of  the  physical  and  metaphysi- 
cal theories  of  the  Platonists  betrays  a  singular  incapacity  to 
find  even  any  approximations  to  important  truth  in  the 
imaginative  essays  of  the  great  teachers  of  antiquity. 
Whatever  else  may  be  true  of  much  of  the  physics  and 
chemistry  of  this  essay,  and  even  of  some  of  its  metaphysi- 
cal suggestions,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  it  contains  some 
of  the  wisest  as  well  as  the  noblest  passages  of  critical  and 
philosophical  wisdom  which  the  English  language  can  show. 
It  would  seem  as  though  the  admiring  reverence  in  which 
Mill  held  Berkeley  should  have  forbidden  the  expression  of 
his  entire  disesteem  of  any  portions  of  his  writings,  even 
if  it  did  not  lead  him  to  suspect  the  soundness  of  his 
own  criticisms. 

NOTE  D. — The  artotype  prefixed  to  this  volume  was 
copied  from  a  painting  executed  at  Newport  by  Smybert 
which  was  presented  to  Yale  College  in  1808  by  Isaac 
Lothrop,  Esq.,  of  Plymouth,  Mass.  The  principal  figure  is 
the  Dean.  The  lady  with  the  child  is  Mrs.  Berkeley,  and 
her  companion  is  undoubtedly  Miss  Handcock.  The  gen- 
tleman writing  at  the  table  is  Sir  James  Dalton.  The  gen- 
tleman standing  behind  the  ladies  is  Mr.  James.  The  one 
farthest  on  the  left  is  Mr.  Smybert,  and  the  remaining  gen- 
tleman is  Mr.  Moffat,  his  friend.  Of  some  five  or  six  por- 
traits of  the  Bishop,  this  is  esteemed  the  best. 

NOTE  E. —  It  may  seem  surprising  to  many  persons  that 
an  estate  of  ninety-six  acres  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of 
Newport  should  have  been  leased  for  nine  hundred  and 
ninety-nine  years  for  so  small  a  rent,  and  that  so  much  im- 
portance should  be  attached  to  the  foundation  of  a  classical 

12 


82  Appendix. 

fellowship,  of  an  inconsiderable  value,  in  an  institution  like 
Yale  College.  The  estate  was  rented  at  first  on  short  leases 
of  a  few  years,  but,  as  is  set  forth  at  great  length  in  the 
statement  of  reasons  which  forms  a  part  of  the  final  lease 
in  1769,  the  waste  and  injury  actually  suffered  by  the  prop- 
erty, the  absence  of  any  reason  for  believing  that  its  value 
would  be  increased,  and  the  expressed  desire  of  George 
Berkeley,  the  son  of  the  original  donor,  induced  the  corpora- 
tion to  make  a  perpetual  lease  of  the  property  as  estimated 
by  its  then  market  value. 

The  significance  of  this  endowment  in  the  history  of  the 
college  lies  in  the  fact  that  this  was  the  first  endowment  for 
a  fellowship  for  graduate  students  that  is  known  to  have 
been  provided  in  any  American  college,  and  that  Berkeley's 
example  is  not  known  to  have  been  followed  till  after  the  ex- 
piration of  a  century. 

"  How  far  that  little  candle  throws  his  beams ! 
So  shines  a  good  deed  in  a  naughty  world. 
—  When  the  moon  shone,  we  did  not  see  the  candle" 

The  Bristed  Scholarship,  yielding  the  income  of  about  two 
thousand  dollars,  was  founded  in  1848,  is  tenable  by  a  gradu- 
ate student  for  three  years  on  certain  conditions,  and  the 
Clark  Scholarship  became  available  in  the  same  year,  and 
gives  the  income  of  two  thousand  dollars  for  two  years 
to  a  resident  graduate.  The  first  Fellowship  proper,  viz., 
the  Douglas  Fellowship  of  ten  thousand  dollars,  was  founded 
in  1872,  and  subsequently,  in  1883,  twenty-five  thousand 
dollars  became  available  by  the  bequest  of  Harry  W.  Foote, 
as  the  foundation  of  one  or  more  fellowships. 

In  1875  the  Soldiers'  Memorial  Fellowship  was  founded 
by  a  gift  of  ten  thousand  dollars;  and,  in  1881,  the  Silli- 
man  Fellowship  became  available  by  gifts  and  their  accumu- 


Appendix.  83 

lation  to  the  same  amount.  In  1877,  f°ur  scholarships  of 
five  thousand  dollars  each  were  founded  by  the  bequest  of 
Mrs.  Irene  Larned. 

From  this  brief  statement  it  appears  that  for  more  than 
a  century  Berkeley's  endowment  was  alone  in  Yale  Col- 
lege, and  perhaps  in  this  country.  From  1733  to  1885 
two  hundred  and  forty  graduates  of  the  college  are  known 
to  have  been  recipients  of  "  the  Dean's  bounty,"  or  at 
least  to  have  been  elected  on  examination  "  Scholars  of  the 
House."  A  nearly  complete  list  of  these,  prepared  under 
the  direction  of  President  Daniel  C.  Oilman,  of  the  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  may  be  found  in  The  Transactions  of  the 
New  Haven  Colony  Historical  Society,  Vol.  I.  A  hasty 
glance  at  their  names  will  discover  very  many  who  attained 
the  highest  positions  in  church  and  state.  A  superficial 
knowledge  of  the  literary  history  of  the  times  will  suggest  ,  •  •' 
that  a  special  and  most  honorable  prize  for  special  studies  in  ^ 
classical  learning,  in  the  authors  proposed,  could  not  fail  to  :  - 
stimulate  to  a  culture  which  would  be  felt  for  the  lifetim^! 
of  every  one  of  these  students.  During  more  than  a  cen- 
tury of  this  time  classical  books  in  good  editions  could  not 
easily  be  procured.  The  careful  study  of  several  books  of 
Homer,  of  a  portion  of  Xenophon,  and  the  Tusculan  Ques- 
tions of  Cicero,  would  leave  its  impress  upon  the  mind  which 
would  never  be  forgotten,  especially  in  the  early  days  of  fewer 
books  and  the  more  complete  and  permanent  mastery  of  their 
contents.  The  authors  which  had  been  read  would  be  pre- 
served in  the  scanty  libraries  which  were  then  at  the  command 
even  of  the  most  favored  scholars.  The  successful  student 
would  not  soon  forget  that  he  had  derived  a  special  advantage 
and  a  distinguished  reputation  from  his  classical  reading,  and 
would  often  recur  to  his  old  text-books  to  rekindle  the  fires 
of  his  youthful  studies ;  while  he  could  not  fail  to  bless  the 


84  Appendix. 

memory  of  the  ardent  idealist  who  had  founded  the  fellow- 
ship which  brought  to  himself  distinguished  honor.  The 
writer  recollects  seeing  in  his  early  youth  a  well-worn  copy  of 
the  Tusculan  Questions,  which  had  been  the  life-long  prop- 
erty of  a  distinguished  Governor  of  Connecticut  who  had 
jpeen  a  Berkeley  scholar.  He  has  an  equally  vivid  recollec- 
tion of  a  story  told  him  by  a  member  of  the  Litchfield 
county  bar  of  one  of  his  associates,  also  a  "  Scholar  of  the 
House,"  who  entertained  him  with  a  recitation  from  the 
Iliad,  as  long  as  he  would  hear  him,  in  a  lonely  ride  in  the 
valley  of  the  Housatonic,  the  ripple  of  whose  waters  was 
the  accompaniment  to  the  well-sounding  Greek. 

As  has  been  already  stated,  more  than  a  century  elapsed 
before  Berkeley's  example  was  followed,  notwithstanding  that 
urgent  and  oft-repeated  appeals  were  made  for  the  foundation 
of  "  terminable  fellowships  "  in  our  colleges  and  universities. 
We  cannot  doubt  that  this  example  will  be  more  stimulating 
and  fruitful  in  the  future  than  it  has  been  in  the  past. 


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